


The Greater Good

by belantana



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, my fandom has been around so long that its children grew up, omfg how did this get so long, started as crackfic then derailed by realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Maisie and Wes are grown up, and everything has consequences. Set series 10.</p><p>
  <em>Wes had never actually called it a game, she realised. It had been her, Maisie, who'd needed that layer of just-pretend.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Opens immediately after 10.04 (the one where Erin's daughter is kidnapped), after which things get slightly AU. Spoilers to pretty much everything ever. 
> 
> Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/80848.html) \- further notes and introduction are there. With many thanks to afiakate, delgaserasca and lost_spook, for whom this is finally finished :)

\- - -

 

"Where are we going?" Rosie asked the nice lady.

"To the playground. You like the playground, don't you? You can play on the swings."

It was hard to hear over the din of the crowd around them, the distant clang and honk of the band, the sizzling of fried things. Rosie did like the playground, but she'd already been on one unexpected walk with strange grown-ups this week and the last time had made her mummy upset.

"Will my mummy be there?" she asked.

"Oh you poor dear, she must be looking all over for you. It'll be much easier for her to find us there, away from all these people."

Rosie liked the sound of that. The crowds of the street fair, which a minute ago had been so exciting, were now making her stomach queasy. She looked around and saw nothing but hips and bottoms and swinging bags. She held more tightly to the nice lady's hand.

"What's your name?"

"Rosie," said Rosie.

"That's a pretty name," the nice lady said. She was on her phone, Rosie realised, holding it to her ear with her fingers expertly hooking back her hair at the same time, so she could keep hold of Rosie's hand. She had beautiful long blond hair, like a princess in a fairy tale. Rosie fingered her own hair uncertainly. The nice lady wasn't talking into the phone, just listening.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strange grown-ups," Rosie said.

"I don't count," the nice lady assured her. "Have a look around, Rosie. Do you see your mummy anywhere?"

Rosie looked, but the crowds at the playground were nearly thick as at the carnival, and she couldn't see far. She saw a tall boy in the line of children waiting for the swings – a big boy too old to play on swings – standing behind his little brother with his hands on his shoulders, just like the nice lady was standing behind Rosie. Rosie looked up at her face again. It was true – the nice lady wasn't a real grown-up. Just like Louise, Rosie's babysitter, who went to the next-door part of her school. Rosie felt safe with Louise.

Looking back the way they had come, the street was sticky with people. Rosie felt sticky too. Scanning the strange faces, none of whom were her mummy, made her feel sick again. She looked down at her shoes instead. There was a paper streamer from the carnival caught in the buckle of her sandal, and she set about trying to free it without tearing it.

"No, it's not," the fairy princess said. Rosie looked up to see that she was talking into her phone again. She looked nervous, biting her lip and scanning the crowds. Then she crouched to speak to Rosie.

"Do you remember your mummy's phone number, sweetie?"

Rosie did not. She'd been proud once to have committed it to memory, but it had changed just last week, after the game with the strange men. Then she remembered, oh glory of glories, that she had a phone of her own now, which her mummy had shown her how to use. She took it out of her special zip pocket and showed it to the fairy princess.

"Oh, very good, Rosie! You can phone your mum and tell her where you are."

Buoyed by the praise, Rosie pressed three, her favourite number, and the green button. "Hello Mummy! I'm at the playground."

The crowds were loud at both ends of the line, but Rosie thought she could hear her mummy crying, and wondered if she'd be in trouble after all. She should've remembered about the phone sooner.

"Rosie, oh lord, I thought I'd lost you. Don't move, I'm coming."

"I'm not lost, Mummy," Rosie said patiently. "I'm at the playground. It's you who got lost."

"Is someone there with you? Are you by yourself?"

"I'm with the fairy princess," Rosie said, but when she turned around the fairy princess was gone.

 

\- -

 

Maisie's heart had been pounding in her throat for a good ten minutes already, but it graciously rose to new heights for the fifty seconds she waited for Erin. Erin was easy, as Maisie had known she would be, so soon after her daughter had been kidnapped for much higher stakes. She'd heard both sides of the conversation thanks to the speakerphone in Wes's pocket. Erin's sobs were still echoing in her ears.

It was this part they hadn't thought to plan. She knew Wes was ahead of Erin and watching Rosie from the other side of the food stalls, but what if Erin didn't come? What if she went to another playground, which – Jesus – their dangerously thin reconnaissance had failed to pick up? What if Rosie, instead of waiting patiently, decided to brave the crowds and try to find her mother on her own?

But here was Erin, hair flying, falling to her knees in the dirt and hauling Rosie into a tearful embrace. Maisie had already turned away, but she could tell Rosie was complaining, struggling to escape from her mother's arms. Maisie knew that confusion all too well.

She headed into a side street where she pulled on a grey hoodie over her pink top, and twisted her hair messily into a bun, going from fairy princess to teenage delinquent in less than a minute. She went back a block and waited in the queue at the ATM, picking her nails and flipping idly through her phone, before meeting up with Wes on the edge of the common ten minutes later, by which time she'd forgotten her recent terror and earlier doubts and wanted nothing more than to crow with manic delight.

"Jesus fucking fuck, Carter, I can't believe that worked."

Wes only scowled, weaving through the crowds without waiting for her. "What's _with_ you?" She hurried to catch up. "Stop sulking. It worked, didn't it?"

"Yeah, no thanks to that idiot!" Wes exploded. "Who lets their five-year-old get out of sight while answering a bloody phone? And who falls for the she-went-that-way trick, outside of shitty movies?"

Maisie was startled. It was what they'd counted on Erin doing, for the plan to work. "Normal people," she said carefully.

"Yeah? Well, she isn't one."

"She is now."

Wes glanced at her sharply. "Will it be enough?"

Maisie tried not to think of Erin's sobs as she held her writhing daughter. "Trust me, she's writing up her resignation letter right now. Or digging through the bin for the one she already wrote last week."

Wes thrust his hands in his pockets and kicked at the ground. They'd left the crush of the carnival behind; this was just ordinary weekend crowds. They turned into a lane, too narrow for cars, and wandered along the line of shops, not too fast, not too slow; it was automatic to Maisie by now. "Maybe," he said darkly. "Did you have any trouble with the kid?"

"She was fine. Took a bit of prompting to remember about the phone."

Wes snorted. "Maybe some people are too stupid to be saved."

There was a hint of the theatrical in his voice now, more familiar to Maisie than the genuine anger. She rolled her eyes. "Come off it. It's not the kid's fault. She's _five_. As if either of us were brainy enough not to fall for that trick when we were five."

"Yeah? Maybe that's why no one saved us."

Maisie felt cold. "Don't say that."

Wes, bizarrely, thought he'd hit upon a great topic of conversation, and was offering it now as some sort of apology for his outburst. "I mean," he continued, warming to the theme, "I don't know about you, but wow, I was pretty monumentally stupid when I was a kid. One time, get this, I decided I'd run away and – "

"Not your fault," Maisie said savagely. "Never your fault. None of it. Hear me?"

Wes held up his hands. "Hey, if I want a bollocking I'll ask for one. I'm just saying – "

She was used to this now, how he'd drag her from a serious conversation to a light-hearted one just as easily as the reverse, often without her noticing and often for no discernible purpose. She almost played along, like she usually did, then she was overwhelmed again by how _infuriating_ he could be. She shook him by the arm. "I mean it. I know. God, Carter, you want to trade stupid stories? Do you know what I did once? I put chocolate icing in the security system and we all got locked in the house with a bomb."

Wes narrowed his eyes and made one of those unnerving logical leaps that always seemed to come just when Maisie had written him off as a complete idiot. "Your father brought home a bomb?"

"Tom's _not_ my father," Maisie retorted, distracted into annoyance.

"But he – "

"Yes. Exactly. Not my fault, though it took me eight years or so to realise it. Just like it wasn't your fault your dad was doing whatever he was doing when you ran away."

There was a pause. Wes shook her hand off his arm and they started walking again. "What did your mum say?"

"That's when we left him," Maisie said, but it came out sounding prim and she waved her hand to dismiss it. "She thinks I don't remember it, or, you know, that I fell for the 'it was all a game' line."

"Ah. That old one."

Maisie's elation was pushing through again. Two days ago this was barely a wild idea, and now they'd carried it all the way through, flawlessly. They were practically James Bond material. She tried a wry smile. "Never fell for that one, did we."

Wes grinned and punched her in the arm like the little brother neither of them had had. "Nope. Fell for lots of things, but never that one."

 

\- -

 

**five months ago**

If there was one thing Maisie's childhood had made her good at, it was moving house. Since they'd left London the last time, there'd been Manchester and Bristol, a few tiny seaside towns, and once a stint on an island when Ellie was with a petrochemical engineer who'd turned out to care more for her cooking than her conversation.

This time there was an ambitious restaurant in an unambitious economy, and thus no men, which was the way Maisie preferred things. She was good at new houses, and new schools, and good at making friends. But it had been half-term when they moved back to London, and she wouldn't start at the new school until after her GCSEs. Studying alone had been impossible when the weather was so lovely and the city so big and interesting.

"I found our old place today," she'd said one evening, when Ellie had a night off. "Tom's place, in Finchley."

Ellie looked startled. Neither of them had mentioned Tom for years, and Maisie half-expected Ellie to invoke some kind of law against it.

"I wouldn't've thought you'd remember it," she said instead.

"I didn't really. Only recognised the shop on the corner with the fairies painted in the window, remember that place? It hasn't changed at all. I thought the whole shop had moved, at first, but it's just they've built out that old car park with an enormous block of flats." She shrugged. "Then I counted doors til I found the house."

"What's it like?"

Maisie shrugged. "Dunno. Same really. Did you ever speak to Tom again, after we left? Call him or anything?"

"No." Ellie smiled, half a grimace. "Wouldn't know how to call him, even if I wanted to. The man liked his secrets." She paused. "What else do you remember? From then?"

Maisie remembered a lot. Shouting and crying and oppressive affection, and bars on the windows and games and rules that made no sense to her, and that look on her mother's face when she realised they were all going to die – not so much frightened as offended, _how can this happen to me_.

"Nothing much," she said, and watched the line of Ellie's shoulders relax.

 

 

Having made the decision to find Tom Quinn, she'd expected the search to take months, but like a lot of dark and complicated things it had turned out childishly simple. Once she'd found the village all she had to do was sit in the tearooms on a Friday afternoon and drink milkshakes until she saw him go into the pub across the road.

Then things had moved too quickly for her to have time for nerves. She'd cornered him at the bar with the demand that he tell her what really happened or she'd tell the internet what she remembered, which wasn't necessarily the same thing. The next thing she knew Tom had grabbed her by the arm and was hustling her down the street – not _how did you find me?_ but, stupidly, "how did you get in the bar?"

"The same way you did when you were fifteen," Maisie said indignantly. "Let go of me or I'll scream."

Once he'd calmed down, he took her back to the tearooms. He looked older than she remembered (stupid, of course he did), but later she was unable to recall if he'd seemed happier. Hard to judge, she supposed, when she'd just ruined Friday drinks, probably his most treasured normal-person tradition. Tom had liked rituals, she remembered. He'd liked _normal_.

Maisie turned down another milkshake and sat stirring her coffee in numb silence while he told her about how he'd met Ellie, and about the bomb in the laptop, and the reasons they'd had to move house. He spoke in plain facts, no weight in his voice, as if they were discussing a film they'd seen.

"Anything you want to ask?" he said when he'd finished.

Maisie forced herself to meet his eyes, then looked down at her coffee again. She'd stirred all the air from the froth."Did you ever come home hurt?" she asked.

"Yes," Tom said evenly. "A couple of times, I expect."

"I have – had – this dream of you, with blood all over your face."

Tom shook his head. "Just a dream."

"Was there ever someone in the house?"

"No, never."

She felt stupid asking the questions, but it would be worse not to go through with it now she was here. She forced herself to ask about each of her dozen or so nightmares. He never laughed, never said _don't be ridiculous_ , as Ellie would've.

"Were you married, when you were with Mum?"

Tom looked surprised at that. "No. Of course not." She saw him tighten his left hand around the coffee cup, and then he nodded, remembering. "I was married a few times for cover. I expect you saw me with the ring, yes?"

Maisie nodded.

"Cover," he said again.

"And that one?"

He turned the ring around his finger. "This one's real."

At first she'd been grateful for his steady calm, but it had begun to get to her. "Did you ever kill anyone?"

Tom, damn him, knew straight away what she was doing. He sat back in his chair and fucking smiled at her. "I think we're done, yes?"

Maisie smiled back, bright and hard. "Right," she said. "Good. Thanks." Then to her surprise and shame she started to cry, because the shadowy monsters that had existed in her head for the past eight years were finally gone.

Tom let her finish crying in silence, for which she was again grateful, and again annoyed at him for making her feel gratitude.

"Did you come on the train from London?"

She nodded.

"I'll walk you to the station."

The main street was deserted, post office and bank having shut at five, and the few shops and cafes following soon after. There was a woman outside the pub, perched on top of a wooden table, smoking and watching Tom like a bird of prey. Maisie recognised her from her peripheral vision in the pub, a blur of blond hair and cigarette smoke. Tom ignored her.

"Is that your wife," Maisie asked facetiously.

"No."

"Your mistress then?"

Tom didn't grace that with a reply.

They walked in silence. She couldn't get the measure of him. She almost wished he'd be angry again, just so that she'd know how to react.

"Aren't you going to ask me how I found you?"

Tom smiled, so quickly she wondered if he had at all. "How did you find me?"

"Remember that time we went to Brighton? And met your uncle in the lolly shop? I don't know if he was really your uncle, but I knew that he really knew you. You went all silent and weird."

"Nigel retired years ago."

"I know. He runs an online store now. I googled it."

Tom nodded appreciatively, but Maisie didn't feel half as clever as she had before. She hadn't expected a reply to her email, had been tongue-tied with nerves when the old man actually phoned her back.

"He called you, didn't he?" she realised.

Tom shrugged.

"Of course he did. And the only reason he told me where you lived was because you told him to tell me. Jesus, you're a piece of work."

She was hot with shame and anger again, but it passed quickly. They'd reached the station. The platform marked the edge of the village, houses on one side, fields on the other. The train wasn't for twenty minutes.

"You don't have to wait," she said.

Tom said nothing. Maisie sat on the bench, a foot folded under her against the cold metal. She swung her other foot against the railing, just to make a noise. There were soft rolling hills in the distance, the faint smell of cows. It was bizarre.

"So you live here now?" she challenged him. "In some tiny boring village? What do you do, spy on farmers?"

"Not much call for that."

"What then?"

"Private work."

"Not government?"

"No."

"But still secret."

"Yes."

"Do you really live here?"

"Yes, I do. Most of the time. Is that so hard to believe?"

"What do you mean most of the time? Where else do you live?"

"America, sometimes."

She hadn't expected that. "Really?" He shrugged. "Where, New York City? Are you a corporate lawyer in your other life?" She tried a gangster accent; failed. "Or do you spy on farmers there too, for the CIA? Nowhere-on-Stoke to Nowheresville, Kentucky?"

"Maisie, please," he said, finally a note of exasperation in his voice. It felt somehow like a victory. He hadn't asked a single question about her, or about Ellie, but she couldn't bring herself to invoke Ellie's name now, just like she'd held Tom's name at bay all those years. Besides, he probably already knew everything about them.

"It's not fair," she said. "You've always known where I am."

"I haven't known."

"Don't lie. I still have all the postcards."

Tom gave her another half-smile. "I never sent you postcards."

"Yeah, whatever."

"What did they say?"

"All sorts of things," Maisie said, suddenly defensive. But Tom seemed genuinely interested, and once again she had the feeling that he wouldn't laugh at her. "Quotes, mostly," she said. "Poetry and things. Never made a lot of sense to me."

Then Tom did laugh. "They weren't signed _Tom_ , though, were they?"

"Of course not. You've used other names before."

"Malcolm?"

"So it _was_ you."

"No," said Tom kindly, "it was Malcolm."

"Seriously?" She stopped swinging her leg. "Who?"

"You don't remember him?"

"No."

She had the odd feeling he was a little disappointed. "You probably only met him once. That time you came on the grid."

"Well how could I be expected to remember?"

"You couldn't." He was pleased again. "Malcolm's been sending you postcards? Since when?"

"Since I don't know. Since ages."

"And you still get them?"

"Got one when we moved back to London." The postcards had never bothered her before, but now she was uneasy. "How did he know we'd moved? And all the moves before that?"

"That's just Malcolm. Don't worry, he's the most harmless man on earth." He glanced at her. "Would you like me to ask him to stop?"

She hesitated, then shrugged, which meant no.

"I'll talk to him anyway," Tom said. "He was always better at this than me."

Better at what, Maisie thought, but she was done asking questions now.

The woman outside the pub had moved down the road, and was sitting on the bonnet of a parked car flicking through her phone. Maisie wondered if she knew how to sit on an actual seat. Eventually Tom sighed and went to meet her. Maisie saw no reason to wait for the still-distant train on her own.

"You missed the link-up," the woman said, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth.

Tom looked aggrieved. Hard to tell if it was from the woman's news or from Maisie following him. "I'll call back."

"Middle of the night there now. He might not be too happy." She hopped off the car bonnet, brushing dust from her trousers. "Anyway, not my problem. I'd better head back to town if I'm going to get those things dug up by tomorrow." She eyed Maisie.

"We used to know each other," Tom said, which was about the lamest explanation Maisie had ever heard, as well as being not strictly true.

"Did you," said the woman. She flicked ash from her cigarette. "Want a lift? Trains are rubbish this end of the day."

"Yes please," Maisie said, before Tom could protest. He clearly wanted to get rid of her, why not make it in a way that pissed him off? And that's us about even, she thought, thank you and goodbye.

 

 

"Do you work for Tom?"

The blond woman changed gears as if imagining herself in a much more powerful vehicle. "I don't work for anybody. I work for me." Then after a pause, "I'm freelancing for him at the moment, yes. Big project. Big money, for a change."

"The CIA pays well, huh."

That got her a sly sideways glance. "Nice try. I'm not telling you shit."

"Why? It's not like I'm going to tell anybody." She was thinking of Ellie, who probably wouldn't believe her anyway.

"Because fuck you, that's why," the woman said smoothly. "Do you want chips?"

"I'm not a child. You can't just buy me off with food."

"Then stop acting like a child. You know very well why I can't tell you. And I was serious about the chips. Bastard kept me waiting at that hole of a pub for hours and I'm starving."

Maisie gave up. She turned Tom's stories in her head, closing boxes, shutting doors. This happened. This didn't. She hadn't expected it to feel as much like loss as it did relief.

 

 

That night, she went through the postcards. They'd been a part of her life for longer than she could remember. She had a hazy recollection of coming home from school to the new house in Harwich, she must've been seven or eight, and finding one on the doormat, but now that she looked through them all there was one addressed to the house in Bristol. That must've been the first, though she had no memory of it.

The Harwich one, she remembered. Puzzling over her name in neat capitals, taking it through to the kitchen - but Ellie was in a mood, so she'd pocketed it quietly, for later. The idea of keeping it a secret had appealed to her, and it must have been that decision, rather than anything in the postcards themselves, that had tied them to Tom.

Looking through them that night, before Ellie got home from the restaurant, she tried to remember meeting Malcolm. Stupid, that she'd made up so many nightmares which had never happened, and forgotten so many little important things which had.

 

 

A few days later she got an email: _malcolm told me to write to you_

She was in the middle of studying for her history final and anything was a welcome distraction. She wondered later if she would've replied otherwise.

 _Why?_ she shot back.

_apparently there's a club for us now_

That the mysterious Malcolm had known where she lived most of her life hadn't bothered her, but the idea that he was omniscient on the internet as well was a bit disturbing.

 _How did you get my email address?_ she demanded.

_found you on facebook, moron_

She was vaguely disappointed that he was a boy, and two years younger than her at that, but she wrote back anyway. She had expected they'd swap war-stories and maybe complain about their parents, but for one reason or another they never did. Their conversations were a mix of the adult and the utterly childish, which the boy seemed to swing between with a skill he couldn't bring to the task of being a normal teenager.

The first people they followed were random. Maisie was nearly certain later; she'd picked a few herself after all. He taught her how to tail someone from behind, then from in front, then back and forth across crowded places and empty without being seen.

"Not like that, Maisie, you moron. He'll see you soon as he turns around. Didn't your father teach you anything?"

"Tom's not my father," she retorted. And no, he bloody didn't.

Wes played intently, as if his life depended on it, but then he did everything intently.

"He's getting the Epping line, I saw him check the times. So you get off before him, okay?"

But the Epping train was eight minutes away, and instead of catching Wes's eye across the crowded platform, she went up to the target. Later she couldn't even remember what she'd asked him – something stupid like _where are you going_ or _what station are you getting off so's we can be prepared_.

Next thing she knew, Wes had dragged her up the stairs and into the street with surprising strength. "What are you _doing?_ "

She shrugged him off. "I got bored of spy games. Ow, Jesus, you're leaving bruises."

"Fuck, Maisie, are you completely useless? If you were bored, why didn't you just give up? Go home, go hang with your idiot girlfriends or whatever. Why did you have to ruin everything? Now he knows who we are."

"So what? He's just a guy."

Wes opened his mouth, then changed his mind abruptly and swung around. Ignore him, she told herself. Leave him to his stupid sulk and go home.

Wes didn't turn around, and she had to hurry to keep up. He muttered something about how he'd seen their faces.

She laughed, sounding forced even to her own ears. "What, did you know him? Who was he, your history teacher or some shit?"

It was a good ten minutes before he calmed down. They sat on the wall by the river. "He's a spy," Wes said resignedly.

"Seriously?"

He shot her a dirty look.

"Do you know him? Does your father know him?"

Wes shook his head.

"Well, why are we following him? Does he have a bomb or something?"

"He has kids."

"Kids?" Maisie was bewildered.

"Two. Seven and four, I think. Boys."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"I have sources." Then there it was, that grin, like this was all a game. "At least now we know," he said.

"Know _what?_ "

"That he doesn't deserve them. Tailed him for nearly an hour, didn't we, and he didn't notice a bloody thing. Here's my bus. Look, it doesn't matter. Sorry I yelled."

You are a crazy person, Maisie thought, watching the bus pull away. You are a legitimately fucked-up crazy person.

 

\- -

 

**today**

 

"You must be very fucking desperate," Calum said, putting down his beer. "The last person I planned to have a drink with ended up dead."

Dimitri had only recently learned to coast over his initial reaction to anything Calum said, which was to punch him in the face. "I'll take the risk," he said.

"Brave man." Calum glanced around, as if their conversation might be overheard, but it was still early and the nearest rowdy group were a few tables away. "So? What did she tell you?"

"Who?" Dimitri asked.

"Erin, you idiot. What's the story? That's why you wanted to talk, right?"

"I haven't spoken to her," Dimitri said, surprised. "She won't return my calls. I wanted to talk to you because I thought she – well – might've returned yours."

"Why?" Calum sounded genuinely puzzled.

"You're her friend, aren't you?"

"And you're her lover."

"What?" Dimitri put down his beer too fast and spilt a little. "Where'd you get that from?"

Calum shrugged. "Not true then?"

"No, it's not." _Not yet_ , he wanted to say, but he supposed that was as good as no anyway, with the way things were.

"Oh." Calum shrugged again. "We're both in the dark then, aren't we? I guess it was to do with that thing that happened with her daughter."

"She was pretty shaken up about that, yeah. But I thought Harry had convinced her to stay."

"He had."

Dimitri turned, feeling like the hapless hero in a pantomime. "Harry. What are you – ?"

He stopped himself when he realised the only place that question led was _what are you doing in a public bar with an average age you haven't seen since before the Beatles._

Harry grimaced, hearing it regardless. "We're celebrating," he said. Ruth, behind him, gave Dimitri an encouraging smile.

"Celebrating?" Dimitri echoed.

"Are you glad Erin resigned?" Calum asked, having less tact and a higher tolerance for withering looks.

Harry, to Dimitri's horror, pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat between them. "Not at all, Calum. I'm bloody furious. Christ knows where I'll find someone now." He sniffed dubiously at his glass of whiskey. "No, it's just been quite a while since I lost a Section Chief to something as mundane as a resignation. Rather novel actually." He raised his glass. "To Erin."

 

 

"I thought you were absolutely _verboten_ to speak to me," Beth said, four hours and three pubs later. Harry, mercifully, had long departed, making it safe for Beth to emerge from the shadows.

Dimitri shrugged. "They care less about that sort of thing now."

"They do? Or you do?"

"Does it matter?"

Beth put down her glass. "All right, cheerful. What's up?"

"Erin resigned," Dimitri said unhappily.

"Really? Good for her. Maybe being an insufferable little bitch finally got boring."

"Hey, speak for yourself," Calum put in.

"Oh shut up, what are you, her labrador?"

"Not a crime to be loyal. After all, she got me a fine job in your fine – sorry, your _former_ – fine upstanding department."

"No, she didn't," Beth said smoothly, "that was Tariq. He found out she was planning on disbanding Section D and blackmailed her into giving him an extra techy."

"Oh." Calum considered this for a long moment, then stormed off, weaving a little. Beth rolled her eyes. She leaned forward to speak to Dimitri. "Why?"

"Did she resign? I don't know. Nobody knows. She won't say."

"Did something happen?"

"When does something not?" He paused. "Yes, something happened, but she – well, she was okay with it. She'd made up her mind to stay. She isn't the kind of person to change it again."

"How do you know?"

He paused. "We got close. After you left."

"After she _fired me_ , you mean. Jesus."

There was only so much bitterness a man could take. Dimitri threw up his hands. "You're as bad as Calum. And Harry, now I think of it. Can no one can think of Erin past the influence she has on their careers?"

"Well, she had rather a big influence on mine." Beth shrugged. "So ask her. If you really want to know. Be pushy. Have you turned up at her house yet?"

"Thought she'd slam the door in my face."

Beth smirked. "Not that close, then, are you."

Dimitri drained the rest of his beer, and said nothing.

 

\- - -


	2. Chapter 2

\- - -

 

**today**

Maisie was invincible. Walking home from the station, after Erin and Rosie, she was still swinging with a heady rush between having done something terrible and something amazing. She hadn't really allowed herself to acknowledge how important the game had become to her, these past few months. Some days it seemed childish, escapist. Today it felt almost noble.

Ellie was home, which surprised her. She slung her bag onto the couch. "Did you finish up early today?"

Ellie showed her her hand, heavily bandaged. "Cut myself. Can you believe it? Twenty years of this and it's still possible."

She sounded pleased, oddly, as if the wound was evidence of all the hard work she'd been doing. Maisie remembered Erin's face as she'd gathered her daughter into her arms. Someone else would be eating dinner with her daughter tonight, and many more nights to come. She felt a rush of affection for Ellie.

"I left the dinner crowd for Frances, god knows if either of them will survive the night. So, how was last night? Did you all get uproariously drunk and spew on Jess's mum's sofa?"

Maisie had almost forgotten what she was meant to be doing this weekend. It had seemed easier not to explain to Ellie that she'd decided weeks ago not to go to Jess's party, and besides, it had meant she and Wes had been able to spend the whole night going over the plan for Operation Erin and Rosie.

"Lots of spewing," she assured Ellie. "Bucketloads. Have you eaten?"

"No. I was going to just whack on some pasta, didn't know when you'd be back."

"I'll do it," Maisie said. "Celebration."

"What're we celebrating?"

"School starts next week."

"Does it? Jesus. That sneaked up on me. God, Maisie, you've been so bloody good about these last few months of hell."

"It hasn't been that hellish," Maisie said truthfully, thinking, was it only a few months?

"All that back-and-forth to Manchester, then summer holidays a hundred miles from your mates and me working sixteen hour days, honestly kiddo you've been a star. I promise it'll get better from now on."

"Now I'll be back at school? With a metric tonne of homework every night plus study on top, and the swim team and chess club and croquet?"

"Croquet?"

Maisie threw a cushion. "Seriously, Mum, it's been fine. I've had a totally acceptable summer."

She knew there was a sense of charade to Ellie's guilt. They'd both worked out by now that they got on much better like this, when Ellie was too busy to be clingy or to tie herself up in another unsuitable relationship, and Maisie could indulge in the occasional maudlin sulk about having to be self-sufficient. She didn't mind that neither of them would ever admit it.

"Really?" Ellie asked again.

"Really really."

"Excellent. I'll neglect you more often then. Oh, I nearly forgot, these came for you."

Ellie fished two postcards from under the stack of accounts she'd dumped on top. "Haven't read them, cross my heart and hope to die. Your mates don't half get about though, do they? Lucky things."

Maisie's heart was in her mouth before she'd even touched the postcards. "Yeah, and they all love making me jealous." She made herself read Bree's first – northern India now, _sorry for the silence May, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a post office up here, plus my cousin's going absolutely mental about the wedding preparations_ – then flipped to the second. The day's operation had left her, apparently, cool as a fucking cucumber, and she had no nerves reading it on the couch in front of Ellie, who granted didn't seem too interested and had long given up keeping track of all Maisie's friends.

It was from Scotland, but postmarked London, and clearly came from neither - it wouldn't surprise her if spies carried around a set of pre-stamped postcards for this express purpose, or perhaps they had their own post office. A view of a misty loch, fishing boats upended on the stony beach in the foreground. The same small, but wide-spaced cursive, the same curiously long-winded address notation – London, England, United Kingdom – that made Maisie expect the date to be written _in the year of Our Lord._ But the date, as always, printed in neat numerals with a dot between, and the message short and cryptic. _I hear you've been busy? But all games come to an end. M._

Maisie's composure faltered. She mumbled an excuse and headed upstairs, but she knew before she'd dragged out the shoebox under the bed that this one was different. Someone had copied the style almost flawlessly; indeed, she couldn't even pick the flaw. But it was undeniably a copy.

"I can't do a thing with this hand." Ellie's voice from down the stairs; the house was small enough that she didn't have to shout. "Will you think me even more neglectful if we get a takeaway?"

Maisie shoved the shoebox under the bed, and pinned both the new cards to her corkboard, next to the others from Bree's Indian odyssey and Bianca in Spain and Chris sulkily stuck in Manchester, working through the most oddball selection of postcards he could find at the local shop and defacing them with his own sadistic improvements.

"Fine by me," she said, heading downstairs again, heart in her throat. "As long as there's champagne."

M, she thought – M for Malcolm, Maisie – Matthew.

 

 

She barely slept; kept jerking awake at odd hours with visions of Erin spinning around and grabbing her arm, and Rosie running across a road. Then it wasn't Rosie, it was herself, younger, and it was Tom's hand grabbing her arm, Maisie triumphant, _I've been tailing you for hours, you didn't notice me._

But he had noticed, somehow, and her unconscious mind couldn't work out whether to be horrified or excited.

Sunday. Ellie was still in bed; she'd be back on the three-til-three shift tonight. Maisie dressed hurriedly: jeans and a baggy old green jumper, shoes without socks. She scribbled a note about meeting Jess in town, probably won't be back til late, stole twenty pounds from Ellie's purse and hurried out the door.

She hadn't checked the timetables, but by the time she'd made it across the still-dewy common and transferred to Clapham Junction there was a train on the platform as if waiting for her. It started to drizzle and she'd forgotten her umbrella. She pulled up the hood of her jumper.

Belatedly, she thought of calling Wes. But she didn't want him here. She sent him a photo of the rain dribbling down the train window. He sent back one of his half-packed suitcase, school shoes and textbooks strewn across the floor: _WOE._ She smirked. _Suck it up, Carter._

Had it really been five months since they'd met, since the game started? She'd told Ellie she'd wanted to have the summer in London so they could spend time together, despite the sixteen-hour shifts and the empty house. She'd told herself it was because she'd grown apart from her friends in Manchester, their stupid dramas and paranoias, and the thing with Jess's boyfriend dumping her in favour of Maisie's almost unconscious flirting – and Maisie, mortified, realising her jealousy had had nothing to do with the boy and everything to do with her best friend.

But how much of her decision, she thought now, had had to do with Tom Quinn and his infuriating presence at the edge of her life? After Wes's revelation about the man on the Epping train, and what came after, she saw Tom everywhere. _Two kids, boys, seven and four I think._ Tom was married now. Did he have children? She didn't think so, but perhaps that was what America was for – putting an ocean between his job and his family.

She hadn't called Wes after their fight and his admission about the people they'd been following. She hadn't told him she'd decided to stay in London for the summer. She had spent half-term intent on being a new person, spending her holiday money on a new, more bohemian wardrobe, afternoons of French films at arty little theatres she convinced herself were study; hours at the library where she found herself more engrossed in watching glamorous university students and crusty eccentric academics than reading her own textbooks.

She'd been watching the whole time. She'd been waiting, however unconsciously, firstly for Tom, and then for Wes. When her phone rang nearly a week later she found she wasn't surprised.

 

\- -

 

**three months ago**

 

"Can you meet me at the station?"

No apology, no greeting, and she was immediately irritated. "What? No, I bloody can't. What's going on?"

"I need to show you something. Can you sneak past your mum?"

"Jesus, Carter, it's after midnight."

A short pause. "Were you sleeping?"

"No," she admitted.

"So?" He sounded impatient. "Can you meet me at the station in ten minutes?"

"Mum's working nights," she said, not really an answer.

"Good, see you then."

It was stifling outside, humid clouds boiling overhead, and she immediately regretted the jeans she'd been comfortable in in the cool of her room. If she went back now she'd be late, and worse, she might change her mind. Crazy person, she reminded herself. But she didn't really mean it.

Wes led her down midnight streets at a brisk pace. She quickly gave up on asking him questions, reduced instead to dawdling in the blasts of cool air from nightclubs and bars, ignoring drunk catcalls from the backs of passing cabs and glancing over her shoulder for muggers and murderers. Then suddenly there was a man in an alley and Maisie's heart nearly stopped.

But the man nodded at Wes as if he was expecting him, and opened an anonymous door into the alley. He was wearing a security uniform. Wes nodded loftily in response, like they were a pair of freemasons, as he lead Maisie through the door.

They were in a dark corridor which was about ten degrees colder than outside. The guard had not come with them, but he didn't need to. Wes knew where he was going. Maisie hurried after him as the corridor twisted and turned. "Where the hell are we?" she hissed.

He glanced at her. "You don't know?"

"Would I ask if I – "

The corridor ended abruptly. They'd come to a courtyard, lit by shadowy light from somewhere Maisie couldn't determine; equally ambiguous running water. And a wall of names. Maisie had never been here before but yes, now she knew where they were.

She stood in silence next to Wes, forgetting for a moment that she was shivering with cold. Jesus, the names. She found herself searching, though she knew Tom's would not be there. She only realised what she was looking for when she saw the Carters.

Finally, she understood. Why Wes was like he was. How they'd got in here. How he knew things he shouldn't know.

The game.

But it wasn't his parents' names Wes was looking at. It was one of the new ones, second-to-last. Maisie shivered suddenly as she wondered how often they updated the list. Once a year? Once a month?

N. SHEPHERD, the name said, and Wes said, "That's him."

"The man we were following?"

"He went on an op in Tripoli. He left the children with his sister. And he never came back."

Maisie nearly asked him how he knew, and then she nearly asked him if that was what had happened to him, and then she nearly asked if that was what the game was about. But she didn't ask, because she already knew. This was why they'd followed a spy with kids, and this was why, by Wes's divine judgement, he didn't deserve them.

"We can't stop people dying in Tripoli, Wes," she said finally, thinking, Jesus, can we?

"No," Wes said. "But we can stop them going."

 

 

The next morning they were outside the house of Nathan Shepherd's sister. Maisie demanded to know how on earth Wes knew this stuff, ready to fight for it, but of course this time he put up no defence. "There's this guy in HR," he said casually, hands deep in his pockets. "He's a complete moron. Thinks he's betraying personnel details to an anarchist group who're blackmailing spies to fund their takeover of the government."

"But he's really supplying them..."

"To me, yeah. I'll turn him in pretty soon, don't worry. I mean he's an utter idiot, seriously, but sooner or later he's going to figure out how big the market is."

They turned back to the surveillance for a while. "She works in a different section," Wes said presently, as they watched Nathan Shepherd's sister moving about the kitchen. Every now and then she bent out of sight, to speak to a child, Maisie realised. "Can you believe it? Her brother's murdered and she still goes back there every day."

"Maybe she's trying to get whoever killed him," Maisie said uncertainly. "Before they kill someone else."

Wes gave her a withering look. "The Greater Good? Oh please." The way he'd said it it had capital letters. "What kind of Greater Good is there if she dies too? We're not in a Rupert Brooke poem."

Maisie had become good at biting back questions she knew wouldn't be answered. "So what do we do?" she asked instead. "Knock on the door? Tell her to resign before it's too late or by our lord the pirate king she'll be sorry?"

"No," Wes said. "Don't be stupid. She wouldn't listen to us and we can't let her know who we are." He paused. "But she'll listen to one of the kids."

 

 

There wasn't really a plan, after that. Maisie had her exams and left Manchester behind for good, then there was just the city and the long hot summer. She and Wes spent days eating ice cream in the park, making up stupid voices for the tourists who passed by out of earshot, and going to see trashy movies just to flick popcorn at the back of people's heads – generally doing all the wildly immature things neither of them as only children had ever got to do.

"How old are you, nine?" Maisie would say scornfully sometimes, when Wes was being especially ridiculous, and he'd roll his eyes and give her his best Valley-Girl impression, "how old are you, forty-five?"

Wes told her stories, most featuring his father in an improbably heroic role, and Maisie scoffed and rolled her eyes and said "come off it, that never happened", and generally indulged him.

Most of the time, though, they'd follow somebody, even as they were busy pretending to be doing something else, and Maisie got the same thrill from it whether she knew who they were following or not. Sometimes Wes would say how many kids he or she had. That was the only time she knew it was real.

After Nathan Shepherd's sister, there was Mark Cheng's resignation, then Harriet Garner's. One, two, three people who would never appear on the wall of names. Wes wouldn't tell her what he said to their children. Was it a threat? A plea? A retelling of his story, _don't let your parents end up like mine_ – but all of them sounded implausibly dramatic.

"Depends," he said eventually, after she'd fed his ego with enough badgering. "It has to be different every time, and subtle. It's one thing to fool the kids and another to fool the parents. They can't know it's coming from us or someone at Five will notice the pattern."

Not for the first time, she wondered if the thrill of getting away with it was half of Wes's purpose. But was she just trying to justify her own guilty thrill by dragging down his supposedly noble cause? Wes had never actually called it a game, she realised. It had been her, Maisie, who'd needed that layer of just-pretend.

"What about the people they protect? I mean, if they aren't doing their jobs any more – "

Wes pulled a face. "Somebody else is. Come on, do you really think the safety of London depends on one person? People are replaceable."

Erin was the fourth. Wes told her how Rosie had been kidnapped, and Erin had returned to work afterwards as if nothing had happened. He sounded half amazed and half furious. Maisie had again asked how on earth he knew such information.

"If someone's telling you this, you need to turn him in."

"The idiot in HR? Oh, I have turned him in. After I got Erin's address. It was Uncle Harry told me about what happened to her kid."

She hesitated. "Really?" The Uncle Harry of his spy stories was a noble figurehead to whom his father had been unquestioningly loyal.

"He's a serious security breach sometimes," Wes said offhandedly. "He still thinks I'm eight years old and can't understand big words and obscure Greek euphemisms."

"So?" Maisie asked. "Same as before, surveillance, find the kid's school, track her movements til you can get her alone and say your magic words to her?"

Wes shook his head. "Erin's daughter was kidnapped at gunpoint, and she didn't resign. The normal method isn't going to work. We need to do something better."

 

\- -

 

**today**

 

It was only when the train pulled up at the village station that Maisie realised she didn't know where Tom lived, or – unbelievably – if he was even called Tom in this partition of his life.

The station was windswept and deserted. She sat on the edge of the platform for a while, telling herself there was no hurry, then she walked up and down the main street. Sunday – even the pub was closed.

Back at the station, she wrapped her arms around herself, slowly feeling dumber and dumber. She didn't have the postcard with her, but she remembered every word, and now the certainty that had hurried her to board a train to the middle of nowhere seemed laughable at best. What was she doing here? Was she that desperate for his approval that she'd seen a message where there wasn't one? Fuck cryptic postcards which may or may not be from Tom. If he'd wanted to see her, why hadn't he just called her, or sent her a goddamn facebook message?

She should go home. She should turn around right now and go home.

Except the train back to London wasn't for two hours, and the rain was getting heavier.

"Fuck," she said, and kicked the metal seat.

"Maisie, isn't it?" said a voice behind her.

She whipped around, the rain making a worse blur of her vision. "No," she said abruptly, too late.

The man was staring at her as if he'd seen a ghost.

"Who the hell are you? How do you know my name?" Suddenly she was terrified. "What's happened? What's _happened?_ "

She made to grab his arm and shake him from his stupor, but he was stronger than he looked, and before she knew it he had her by the wrist. People here must think I'm crazy, she thought absently. So far all she'd done in public was shout and cry.

"Come on," the man said. His grip was like a vice but his voice was gentle. "Come on, let's get out of the rain."

 

\- -

 

"I don't want to talk about it."

Dimitri must have looked more heartbroken than he'd meant, because Erin softened almost immediately. "Come in, if you like. But you won't change my mind."

"I'm not here to change your mind," he said, stopping in the hall to step around the half-packed boxes. "Where are you off to then?"

"Wales. Mum's got brothers there, I think she's wanted to go back for years. The only reason she's stuck around in London is for me."

"What will you do?"

Erin shrugged. "The law degree will probably come in handy."

"No shit. You've a law degree?"

"Well, five-sixths of one. Service poached me before I could finish." She was making coffee, clearing drawings and crayons off the table before putting down the mugs. Big old mugs, chipped and tea-stained, World's Best Mum and Budapest, Hungary. Dimitri flashed back a moment to his first smug assessment of Erin's minimalist life, and flinched that he'd got her so wrong.

"I'll probably have rings run round me by all these snappy new graduates," she was saying. "I'm not sure I even remember the difference between a tort and a subpoena."

"At least you knew once," Dimitri said dubiously.

"Come on, sailor boy, you're not so dumb."

She hit him on the arm, and suddenly they were touching. Dimitri's skin tingled. But Rosie was playing upstairs and Erin was going to Wales and Dimitri wasn't an idiot. He pulled her into him for a brief embrace.

"What happened, Erin?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"Please don't – "

"No, Dimitri, it really was nothing. We were at the street fair, you know, Rosie wanted to see the dancers. Crowds everywhere. I told her and told her, but she's five years old, she can't be expected to – It's just when I saw she was gone, I panicked."

"You lost her in the crowd?"

"I only let her out of my sight for a second, to answer my bloody phone. Then when I looked up she was gone. I probably would've found her sooner, if I'd gone looking the right way."

"Someone pointed you the wrong way?"

"A kid, D. Not a conspiracy. Little kid in a baseball cap, _she went that way_." Erin shook her head, as if still admonishing herself. "Anyway, I found her at the park. A girl had been keeping an eye on her. She remembered how to phone me, like I taught her. It can't have been more than a few minutes we were apart. But that feeling when I realised she was gone – god, it was ten times worse than before, because this time I thought it was over. I understand now. It's never over. It'll never _be_ over until I get out."

She shook her head. "If I ever have to make that decision again..."

Dimitri pulled her close again. "You won't," he said. "You won't have to."

After they'd drained their coffee, he offered to help Erin pack, knowing she'd turn him down. "How's the team?" she asked.

Dimitri hesitated, knowing they'd both been avoiding the question. "Section D's been disbanded, and Harry forcibly retired. Apparently you were the non-negotiable condition of his reinstatement after the tribunal."

Erin nodded at her empty coffee mug. "I thought that might happen, but I was hoping they'd've seen sense by now... I'm sorry, D."

"It's okay, it's fine. Calum and I are managing gamely back in Section A. Ruth's been seduced by the Home Sec. Places found for everyone. Harry had a lot of enemies, Erin, not your fault."

"I know." She smiled sadly. "Perhaps it's for the best."

Rosie skipped in to show him a drawing she'd made. Dimitri was duly appreciative of her complicated explanation, then he took advantage of Erin being busy at the sink.

"I got lost," Rosie answered. "A nice lady helped me. I don't get lost any more, because I'm grown up now."

Dimitri crouched to her height. "Who was the nice lady, Rosie?"

"It's okay," Rosie said, with surprisingly adult reassurance, "she wasn't really a grown-up. I'm not supposed to talk to strange grown-ups."

"What did she look like?"

Rosie thought. "A fairy princess."

Dimitri wondered if there'd been CCTV of the street. Eyewitnesses would be useless. In those crowds, at a street fair full of clowns and balloons, who would've turned a head at a little girl walking hand-in-hand with a fairy princess?

 

\- -

 

Tom's house wasn't as Maisie had imagined, but then, she'd been unable to imagine it at all when she'd tried. It was small, perhaps part of what had once been a larger house; a strip of garden hazy in the rain. There were a few sad-looking plants in the window, a red letter-box. Books. No photographs. A painting of a grey sea, grey sky.

She wrung out her hair, perversely satisfied that it dripped all over the carpet, then moved into the kitchen. "Where's Tom?"

Malcolm was arranging the tea tray with great care. "I'm afraid he's had to go overseas. Do you take sugar?"

"Where? To America? Why?"

He brought the tray to the table and sat down opposite her. "I'm sorry, but even if I wanted to tell you I couldn't. I've been retired a good few years, you see. It's been a long time since I've had operational details."

"But Tom's retired too," she retorted, then: "Isn't he?"

"Oh yes. He's been out of the service longer than I have, even. But I'm afraid that doesn't make his business trips any more a matter of public scrutiny."

Maisie gave up. She'd eaten nothing since last night and the tea was absurdly comforting. All the questions that had been burning her up on the journey had died in her throat. How could she rephrase them to this stranger, who was somehow less of a stranger than Tom's house, Tom's life?

Malcolm put down his cup. "I'm sorry if I frightened you, before. I – well, you were this big last I saw you. And you've grown up so much."

It wasn't an answer, but something in his voice made Maisie unwilling to press further. "S'okay," she said. "I don't remember you."

"Quite expected. You were very little."

"Did Tom tell you I was coming?"

Malcolm frowned. "No. He was called away on very short notice, but that's no excuse. He asked me to look in on the place while he was away, but he was already gone when I got here."

Maisie raised an eyebrow at the dead geraniums. "Watering the plants?"

"I suspect they're a lost cause. For the dog, mainly."

"Tom has a _dog?_ "

"Full of surprises, our Tom. She's in the garden, seems to like the rain, funny old thing. You can meet her later if you'd like."

Maisie had a sip of tea. Outside, the wind whipped up the rain and slammed it against the glass.

"I never thanked you for the postcards."

Malcolm, as she'd expected, looked away awkwardly. "It's hardly worthy of thanks. I hope I never worried you or anything like that."

Maisie shook her head. "I don't think I ever understood half of what you wrote, but I liked them. I liked that all the places we'd been to were tied together, back when we were moving so much. It made me feel safe somehow."

Malcolm nodded.

"That last one you sent," she said, just to make sure. "Have you been there?"

"Dresden? Goodness no, not for a long time."

Maisie carefully folded the Scotland postcard into the knot of her feelings about Tom. She couldn't ask Malcolm about it, not when he was trying so hard not to look at her, fixing on a point over her shoulder when he couldn't avoid it, or staring straight through her. Perhaps he was embarrassed, she thought. The postcards had been something at a distance, and here she was drinking tea right in front of him. It was clear he knew nothing of the game, of Erin Watts or Nathan Shepherd or the others.

"You wrote to Wes too," she said, not a question.

"Yes. I write to a lot of the children." He paused. "Not that either of you are children any more."

It dawned on Maisie, slowly, where Wes had got his names, his list of addresses and ages. Had Malcolm given it to him knowingly? Surely not. If Tom trusted him, he was hardly a man to be frivolous with the privacy of agents' families, and neither was he a man easy to fool. Wes, however, was possessed of more cunning than Maisie had before realised. He had also chosen to lie to her before betray Malcolm's trust.

Or perhaps she was wrong. At least some of Wes's wildly implausible stories had turned out to be true; why not the one about the anarchist in HR, and Uncle Harry's discretions?

"And how is our mutual friend Wes?" Malcolm asked, as if reading her thoughts. "He hasn't been skipping school again, has he?"

"Not too much." She smiled shyly, circling the pattern on the tablecloth. Spies like Malcolm had never fitted in to Wes's stories, or the game, but she found herself comforted that they existed. "Malcolm, what happened to Wes's parents?"

Malcolm raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. "You haven't asked him?"

"No. I – I don't know. I didn't think he'd want to talk about it."

"Well, a lot of it's classified of course, but no harm it would do now. Would you like to know?"

Maisie looked up at him, then away. She shook her head. Something about Malcolm's calm made her feel like a child again, in a way that Tom's had only made her angry and frustrated.

"If you could've stopped them going," she said hesitantly, "stopped them – wherever they were going. Would you have?"

Malcolm stared out the window for so long that she thought he wasn't going to answer. "Yes," he said finally. "Yes, Maisie, I would've. I'd've stopped them all." He stood, collecting the tea things, and offered her a sad smile. "I think that's why I'm retired, don't you?"

 

\- -

 

"You spoke to her?" Calum looked for a second as if he was about to prove that his lover theory was real, but curiosity got the better of him. He sat on Dimitri's desk. "What did she say?"

"Nothing. I mean, nothing happened. She lost Rosie in a crowded street and she panicked." Dimitri gave him the rest of the story. "It was an accident."

Calum stared at him for a long moment. Fuck you, Dimitri thought, I used to be good at this.

"And if it wasn't an accident, it wouldn't matter anyway," he admitted. "There's no CCTV in that street, or in the park."

Calum gave him a withering look. "Jedi, much to teach you I have." He spun around to his computer. "What was the date again?"

"Twenty-eighth."

"And the time? The exact time?"

"I don't know," he said, then realised he did. "Around one o'clock. The carnival started at twelve. I told you, there's no CCTV, I've already looked."

"Patience, young one. Saturday afternoon... Wandsworth... SW18. There, six thousand and fourteen results."

Dimitri stepped closer. "What on earth is that?"

"Photos. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, et cetera et cetera. All the hipster kids are posting to at least three of them. Course most of them are private uploads, or at least the geographic data is private. A small matter to someone of my skills. And then pooling them into this sexy streamlined interface is a piece of proverbial gateau."

Dimitri scanned through the photos. "You set all this up for – ?"

"Entertainment, obviously. You should see the stuff that comes up for three a-m Soho." Calum paused, savouring the thought, then added, "Of course it crossed my mind that it might have surveillance value, once I work out the illegality thing."

"You're a dick, Calum."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"So did anyone take a photo of Rosie with a strange woman, at around one o'clock?" He'd edited out _fairy princess_ , for obvious reasons.

Calum started typing. "Highly unlikely. But she'd have done a reconnaissance, wouldn't she, if it was planned? A couple of hours of surveillance at least. That ups the chance of her being photographed by a hipster. _Lots_ of hipsters at street fairs, Dimitri. Craploads of them. There, I sent all six thousand and fourteen images to your terminal. Search away."

Dimitri went back to his desk, not much else to say. Sometimes he missed Tariq so much it hurt. He wondered if he'd like Calum more if he wasn't the polar opposite of Tariq, but realised he probably wouldn't.

 

\- -

 

"It was weird," Maisie told Wes on the phone one night, a week into term. "It was like Malcolm recognised me, but didn't want to."

She'd told him about her trip south, but made it into a bored afternoon's excursion, leaving out the postcard and most of the conversation.

"Course he did," Wes said. "You look like someone he used to know."

"Really? How'd you know?"

There was a pause. Wes sounded distant; she heard a whistle in the background and realised he was outside, near a playing field perhaps. She pictured a group of idiotic boys in the mould of Jess's idiotic ex-boyfriend, driven through militaristic drills by a tyrant who'd had the same education, shoving each other over in the mud when he wasn't looking. "I recognised you, too. I thought I did."

"Come off it," she said, but there was another pause, and she could tell he wasn't lying. "Who? Who do I look like?"

"I don't really remember her. It was when I was really small. She came to the house a few times, I saw her downstairs drinking wine and gossiping with my dad."

"What's her name?"

"She said it was Kate."

"What's her real name?"

"No idea."

"You don't know?"

"She never said."

"Oh, whatever. As if that's stopped you finding out tonnes of other stuff."

She could almost see him shrug in response. He was more adult on the phone, recognising the childish part of their relationship as incompatible with distance, or perhaps it was being back at that god-fearing school in the middle of nowhere that changed him.

"What happened to her?" Maisie said hesitantly. "Is she on the wall of names?"

"Don't know, do I," Wes said, with impeccable logic. "Don't know her name."

Something was pushing at the edge of Maisie's memory, something from when Tom had still been Matthew. A tall woman, blond possibly: _hello Maisie, do you like the teletubbies?_ Maisie, scornful of being patronised even then: _I'm not a baby._

Was she who Maisie looked like, now? She tried in vain to remember the woman's face, and got a flash of Ellie crying for her troubles. Jesus, why was everything from then so tangled together?

"How is your esteemed not-father, anyway?"

Maisie ignored the baiting. "He wasn't there. Just Malcolm. He was on some fucking mysterious overseas holiday."

"Arsehole," Wes said.

She bit her lip to stop smiling. "I got a postcard," she said finally, by way of explanation. "I thought he wanted to meet."

"A postcard? Not from Malcolm?"

"It looked like one of Malcolm's, but it wasn't. A good copy. I thought – "

"Let me see it."

"Sure. Here you go."

Wes sighed. "Take a photo and send it to me, would you? I need to see it."

"You really don't," Maisie assured him.

"Come on, you can't tell me that and then not show me. I'm going crazy up here, Maisie. Rugby at one end and chapel at the other and my brain's being pummelled to mush in the middle. Plus the new kid I'm roomed with is all snivelling homesick in his pillow, another week of this and I swear I won't be responsible for throttling him. Show me."

Maisie dutifully photographed the postcard, front and back, and lay on her bed with her feet against the wall while she waited for Wes to receive it. She took a moment to feel sorry for any kid who had to share a room with a hard-as-nails arrogant genius who'd been boarding since he was eight.

"That's not from Malcolm," he said, when she picked up again.

"I know. I told you."

"Then why do you think it's from Tom?"

"I don't know, because it's not from Malcolm. M for Matthew." Silence. "Who else would it be from?"

"How many other postcards have you got from Tom? Signing as Matthew or otherwise?"

"None. He never wrote to me."

"Then why the hell would he start now? And pretend to be Malcolm? And tell you he wanted to meet when he knew he wouldn't be there?"

"It doesn't actually say a time or place," Maisie pointed out, but Wes wasn't listening. "Who else would it be from? Wes? Do you know?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Wes said with deep seriousness. "But we should find out."

 

\- - -


	3. Chapter 3

\- - -

 

Dimitri had never been one for bringing work home. He worked hard, and late when he needed to, but once he was out the doors of Thames House he was a normal guy until Monday morning. Technically, it was forbidden for anyone in the security services to write down even a single innocent-sounding work-related word outside of the grid, let alone bring home files and surveillance photographs and memory sticks of information. Dimitri was probably the only person in the history of Section D to live by that rule.

In the Navy, the idea of working on a rest period was not only considered laughable but seriously insane. Still, the people you hung out with, got drunk with, played cricket with and chatted up girls with, were by necessity your workmates, and Dimitri missed that more than anything.

Long before Section D was finally disbanded, he found himself creating those bonds wherever he could. He'd sacrificed his preference for first-person shooters to play fantasy quests with Tariq. He went to the gym with a couple of guys from Section C, and had morning coffee with Cerys from the art department, who regaled him with tales of the ridiculous things she'd been asked to forge. He signed up for as many weekend courses as he was allowed despite already knowing more and half again than the instructor on automatic weapons, and even once accompanied Ruth to a play before wisely hooking her up with Cerys.

All told, the sight of Dimitri at a glowing computer screen in a darkened room on a Friday night when everyone else had left for the pub would have been mildly alarming to Tariq, Beth, Ruth, Erin, Lucas or Harry. All of whom were gone – Dimitri preferred to lump them together as gone, softening the blow of Tariq and the imaginary person who'd been Lucas. It also reminded him that he really, really shouldn't call Beth, or at least not ever again after this one last time, which was what he told himself every time he found himself scrolling through his phone for her number.

He hadn't planned on discussing Erin and his paranoid theories about her resignation. He hadn't planned on anything more illegal than Beth sitting on his couch and helping him make serious headway into the beer in his fridge, the stack of Six Feet Under DVDs on his table, and maybe a curry. But he'd forgotten that he'd already been making inroads into the beer while staring gloomily at the photos he'd taken home with him, and had carelessly left one on the counter.

Beth zeroed in on it immediately, hungry for the mindless data trawling that she would never admit she missed in her new life of dubious phone taps and the many, many ways to conceal a weapon. Dimitri didn't see any point in hiding the rest from her.

"Levendis," she said in scornful wonder when she'd ascertained that the photos were definitely not family snaps. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"It's not really work," Dimitri muttered. "It probably breaks less protocols to have it here than on the grid, actually."

Beth was flicking through the dozen or so photos that Dimitri had painstakingly picked from Calum's thousands. None showed Rosie, and only one showed Erin – and then she was only recognisable because Dimitri knew in intimate detail how she liked to wear her hair and what her favourite weekend shirt was. The same photo also showed, in equally blurry detail, the peak of a baseball cap and part of the sleeve of a pink dress. Despite its apparent focus on three smiling friends in skinny jeans and oversized glasses, to Dimitri it was the money shot. The only one that showed all three of them together.

Beth flicked past it with only a second's pause, but stopped on a later one that showed the girl in the jeans and short pink dress and the grey shoulder bag that had been only a strip of colour in the money shot. Dimitri had started his search with a slightly shamefaced google of the words 'fairy princess', discovering long wavy blond hair and the colour pink to be the main ingredients. She was cut off at the edge of the frame, looking down – perhaps holding Rosie's hand.

Beth turned to the next photo, then immediately back. "I know her."

Dimitri glanced over her shoulder on his way to the fridge. The main subject of the shot was a goth girl presenting a plate of nachos to the camera with awed reverence. "Didn't think she was your type."

"Not her, _her_ ," Beth said, and Dimitri's heart skipped a beat as she stabbed a finger at the fairy princess in the background.

"Sure you do," Dimitri said uncertainly.

Beth made an impatient sound through her teeth. "I drove her home once, must have been six months ago." She glanced up. "She _is_ the target of these photos, right, despite the focus on appalling denim mashups? What's she done?"

Dimitri took the photos back. "Who is she?"

"She's – " Beth paused; apparently her new career also had protocols " – somehow related to an employer I had. A job I ran back in May. Ex-MI5 guy." She paused again. "Could've been April. Or March."

It made no sense. Dimitri glanced at the photos again. There were no clear shots of the girl's face.

"What the hell, Beth," he said, almost angrily.

"I'm serious! You think I'd forget someone with hair as fantastic as that? I've wanted hair like that since I was six years old, and here it was wasted on the head of some sulky little brat. What was her name... nope, can't remember. She'll be on service records though, as a dependent."

Dimitri's head was swimming. "Really?"

"Sure. If Tom still is. If they haven't expunged him I mean, and burned his file and buried the ashes under an oak at midnight or whatever witchcraft they have for purging traitors."

"Her father's a traitor?"

"Not the blow-up-the-government, Russian-spy kind. Just the ordinary old disillusioned-with-the-system kind. Come to think of it, I don't know if he ever told me her name, or said he was her father. I think he was pretty annoyed with her showing up out of the blue."

"Right," Dimitri said. "Well, thanks."

"No problem, boyo. Got any other cases you need solving? I charge by the hour." She gave him her coy little Mona Lisa smile.

Dimitri handed her another beer. "Tell me everything."

 

\- -

 

"You couldn't even be bothered to change out of your uniform?" Maisie asked.

Wes gave her a disdainful look. "How many people on this train do you think know where my wretched hellhole of a school is?"

He was right – he'd attract far more attention out of uniform on a Monday morning. Maisie had piled her hair on top of her head in an attempt to pass for eighteen. The train was heading in the opposite direction to the commuter flow and no one gave them a second glance.

Maisie checked her phone. "I'm meant to be in double Lit now."

"You're welcome."

"Say that again when _you're_ doing A-levels at a new school," she muttered. "You're so sure this couldn't wait til next weekend?"

Wes didn't dignify that with an answer. Maisie had skipped school for it; she knew very well she couldn't wait til the weekend either. It was nerves making her petty. She didn't know what it was making Wes the opposite, but his haughty silence was driving her mental. Three hours ahead of them and she was already about to explode.

"Bet your father didn't have to spend so much time on trains. Bet he had a chauffeur-driven Mercedes for this kind of shit."

"My father once blew up a train," Wes said offhandedly.

"Oh please. I think I'd've heard of that, unless he was the underground bomber."

"Never said it was in Britain."

As if on cue, the brakes started to screech and the train slowed, taking over a minute to come to a full shuddering stop. Maisie turned to look out of both windows. Acres of terrace houses, but not a station in sight. Static on the train's PA system. People started groaning before the driver had even spoken.

Wes was playing a game on his phone, fingers moving so quickly Maisie couldn't help staring. She realised he was as tense as she was.

Twenty creeping, insufferable minutes before the train started moving again, and then it was only to limp at walking pace to the next station where everyone streamed out onto the platform. "Right," Maisie said, attempting to regain control of her frustration. "Do we wait for the next train, or the coaches?"

"Neither," Wes said coolly. He nodded. "Her."

"Who?"

"Her." He grabbed Maisie's arm and dragged her after a woman who was heading towards a waiting car. "I heard her on the phone. She lives in – 'Scuse me, ma'am?"

_Ma'am_ , Maisie scoffed internally, what century are we in, but she took over when the woman turned around. "Sorry to – how far are you going?"

She'd settled, for some bizarre reason, on a French accent, and felt Wes eyeing her in surprise, but it worked. English children don't beg lifts from strangers, not outside of Enid Blyton.

"My host brother and I are going to miss our connection if we have to wait for the coach," Maisie continued, pulling an apologetic face, and the woman made comforting noises and ushered them into the backseat of her car.

The woman, as it turned out, had been an exchange student in France herself, and it took Maisie a fair amount of mental gymnastics to construct an identity under her questioning, based nearly wholesale on the student from Normandy who'd been in her physics class in Manchester, though she changed Francois to Celestine. She found, to her relief, that it kept her mind occupied for the duration of the journey, and before she knew it they were pulling up to the station.

"Are you sure you two will be okay?" the woman asked. "Maybe George and I should wait with you – "

"Oh no, Mrs Judd, you've been too kind, thank you so much."

"Celestine," Wes smirked as the car pulled away, and she shoved him. It was the same high she got from tailing someone through the middle of London; she could feel her skin flushed, her fingers prickling with adrenalin. She thought again of the mysterious woman she'd invoked in Malcolm and Wes's memories – was this what she did all day?

Wes ducked into the toilets at the station and changed out of his school uniform. Maisie's high lasted until the corner into Tom's street. It was lined with trees and she couldn't see the house yet, but she knew that something wasn't right. She fell silent, then started to walk faster. Wes followed. She had a moment to marvel at how quick he was now to trust her instinct.

They were still a hundred metres away when she started to run, and then she staggered to a stop, out of breath from something other than the brief exertion. Wes didn't have to ask her which house was Tom's.

"Jesus," he breathed. "Maisie – "

But nothing came after. There was nothing to say.

 

\- -

 

"What makes you so sure she'll be here?" Beth asked as Dimitri rang the doorbell.

"Nothing."

It was partly hope, and not much at that. Dimitri didn't remember having ever skipped school so he could hang out at home, but with the scant information they had about Maisie Simm he didn't know where else she could be. The principal at Maisie's school had been no help – he had too many serial truants to worry about a new girl.

"She's probably skiving off with some guy behind the bike sheds," Beth said helpfully. "Or stealing stuff down the shops."

"Sounds like you had a great time at school."

"Oh, I did. Except for when I was actually at it."

Dimitri rang the bell again. He knew Beth had already followed through the same logic as he had – three rings would mean she wasn't home, and with a quick reconnaissance for inquisitive neighbours they could feel free to invite themselves in. He'd already scoped the deadlock – solid-looking, but one of the first kinds that his crash course in dubiously legal skills had taught him to pick. It had clearly been a while since a spy had lived in this house.

"That explains a lot," he said belatedly.

Beth rolled her eyes and leant on the doorbell in reply.

To be honest Dimitri felt a little nervous at the idea of going through a teenage girl's room. He tried to imagine Beth as a teenager and felt worse. "Right," he said. "You check the back and I'll – "

The woman who opened the door had clearly been asleep – checked pyjamas, bare feet, messy hair, the works. "Oh," said Dimitri. "Sorry to, er, intrude."

He sneaked a glance at Beth, who was looking equally backfooted. For some reason the possibility that Maisie's mother would be at home hadn't crossed either of their minds.

The woman put one hand on her hip. Her other hand was bandaged, stained with something that could have been blood or food. "What do you want?"

"Ellie Simm?"

"Yes."

"We're hoping to speak to Maisie."

Ellie narrowed her eyes. "She's at school. Who are you?"

Dimitri showed the warrant card Cerys had made up for him a few weeks back. Ellie barely glanced at it; Dimitri wasn't optimistic enough to believe it was because she trusted him implicitly.

"May we come in?"

"No. What do you want with Maisie?"

"She's done nothing wrong," Beth assured her. "Perhaps if we came in – "

The woman considered them for another long moment, then rubbed at her face tiredly. She opened the door and let them into the hall. They clearly weren't getting any further. Dimitri didn't know Tom Quinn but he must've been a right arsehole, to make this woman so fiercely suspicious.

"Do you work nights?" Dimitri asked, to be sociable. The hall was bright but bare, as if still waiting for knick-knacks and framed photos to be unpacked. Dust had collected along the skirting.

"And days. I run a restaurant. What do you want with Maisie?"

"We think she may have seen a suspect escaping after an assault. We have her on CCTV near the site."

"How do you know it's her?"

"It was just outside the City Library," Beth lied smoothly. "The staff recognised her in the footage."

Dimitri could've sworn he felt Ellie soften a fraction at the thought that Maisie had been studying. He mentally congratulated Beth – the library membership being the only other piece of information they'd been able to glean from Maisie's records.

"When was this?"

"Saturday the twenty-eighth," Dimitri put in, before Beth could founder.

"Well it wasn't her. She was in Manchester."

Dimitri's heart sank. He shared another glance with Beth, but her expression was resolute: _I know what I saw_. "Are you sure? Saturday, about two weeks ago?"

"It was her best friend's birthday. She'd been excited about it for weeks."

"Are you sure?" Beth pressed again, a little too far. Ellie's gaze sharpened.

"Why would she lie?"

"Perhaps if she could give us a call," Dimitri said, passing over one of Cerys's fake cards. "Just to clear things up officially."

Ellie took the card without a word. Dimitri hesitated. He knew Beth was right, when she'd said there was no way they could ask about Tom Quinn without blowing their hastily constructed cover, and besides, Beth was so certain he wasn't involved. But he still –

Now he had both women glaring at him. Dimitri ducked his head and they made a tactical exit.

 

\- -

 

Wes took Maisie to the same tearooms where she'd sat with Tom, and bought her a coke with a fiver he probably hadn't earned. Maisie was shaking, the caffeine not helping. She sifted through the pile of magazines on the counter, looking dumbly for a local paper, as if that would explain what had happened.

Wes was trying to call Malcolm. She could hear the recorded voice over the line: _the number you have called has not been recognised. Please check the number and –_

"Let's go back."

Wes eyed her. "You're sure?"

It was vaguely touching; he was clearly unused to dealing with someone else's emotions in this way. Maisie thought, unexpectedly, of the homesick boy who shared his room at school. "Yes," she said.

The house wasn't as badly damaged as she'd first thought. The fire had taken out the front two rooms, but the rear looked intact. She checked the street for prying eyes, then jumped the fence and went around to the back, not waiting to see if Wes followed.

The house was long empty, that much was obvious. The back door had been forced, the wooden jamb splintered where the lock had been smashed in. Could've been the firemen. Could've been anyone.

She slipped through the opening. The kitchen and the front room, where she'd sat with Malcolm, were nearly unrecognisable. Black and sodden with rain through the sagging roof, or was it from the firemen's hoses still? How long had it been? She could still smell the smoke, but the ashes were greying.

Broken crockery in the kitchen. Warped furniture, a half-burned chair crouching on two legs. The painting of the sea was intact, hanging crookedly on a smoke-darkened wall, a pale square behind it where it had been dislodged. The contents of the cupboards had also survived, the thick doors scorched.

Back on the street, an elderly neighbour was ostensibly watering his garden, waiting for them. "You kids should stay out of there," he said sternly. "It's not safe."

His geraniums, a distracted corner of Maisie's brain noticed, weren't in much better state than Tom's had been. "What happened?" she asked.

The neighbour shrugged. "Electrical fault, the firemen said. Mrs Davies got the place rewired last year before she sold, but – " he shrugged again, "these old places, you never know." He was looking at them curiously, Maisie knew, her blank shock, folded arms, but her brain was numb and her tongue thick in her mouth.

Wes stepped up. "We used to live here," he said. "Yonks ago. Was anyone inside?"

"No, luckily. Always away on work he was. Overseas somewhere."

"Do you know where he's gone?" Wes asked nonchalantly. "We had some things hidden under the floorboards, maybe he took them."

"No idea, sorry."

"What about the dog?" Maisie interrupted.

The neighbour peered at them suspiciously. She'd blown Wes's story now, but she didn't care.

"Bolted for the hills, I think."

Wes nudged her. "We should get back."

"Yes," she said. "I – thanks."

The neighbour said nothing, but she could feel his eyes on her back all the way down the street.

 

\- -

 

Dimitri was on night surveillance, which meant no one expected him on the grid until eleven or so, at which time he was expected to write up a detailed report of the nothing which had once again happened at Golyubev's apartment. Ten minutes in, he was fantastically bored.

He went down to Registry to pick up some files he didn't really need, then pretended to forget one and went back, a manoeuvre which was rewarded by running into Cerys on her way downstairs for coffee.

"I'll shout you one," Dimitri offered.

Cerys narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"So I can drug you and find out your secrets." When she didn't find that funny he tried again. "For rescuing me from the dragon."

That earned him a smile. It was hard to imagine a less dragon-like Section Head than Peter Eames, and in the moments when his grief for others was at saturation point, Dimitri was surprised to realise that he missed Harry too.

"How's Erin?" Cerys asked, blowing on her scalding coffee.

Dimitri hadn't been to see her again, not until he had something concrete. He didn't think he could stand her pitying look if she thought he was just being paranoid, and neither could he stand upsetting her if it turned out that he was. What was he hoping for, anyway? Erin discovering she'd been played and deciding to rejoin the service out of principle? They wouldn't put Section D back together in her honour; likely as not Dimitri wouldn't even be working with her. And was that what _she_ really wanted? He remembered her easy smile the last time he'd seen her, the calm relief at her decision.

"She's good, actually," he said finally, truthfully. "Who'd've thought the service made people so miserable?"

Cerys huffed in reply. Dimitri had been happy befriending her because she was a safe ten miles from his type, but something about her horse-like features and dyed red hair was alluring to him today. Christ, Levendis, you need to get out more. Or out of here.

"That's exactly what Mark said," Cerys added. "Well, what Hannah said that Mol said that Mark said. Cheery bunch of gossips, aren't we."

"Who's Mark?"

"He was my best customer. Undercover in three different groups at once, kept me on my toes with demanding paperwork for one or the other or all three at ridiculously short notice." She shrugged, setting her earrings jangling. "Kind of quiet now he's gone."

"Gone where?"

"Dunno. To spend more time with his kid, I think he said. Didn't even know he had a kid."

"Huh," Dimitri said, cleverly.

"Actually there's been a rash of them lately. Marie Shepherd, too. Maybe it's the weather."

"A rash of what?"

"Surprise resignations. That's what we're talking about, right?" She picked the mushy apple from her pastry and ate it piece by piece. "I wish I could up and leave sometimes, just like that."

"Why don't you?" Dimitri asked.

She wrinkled her nose. "Why don't _you?_ My overdraft, my mortgage, the sodding dog. It's the most depressing thing ever but how am I going to feed my dog if I don't commit fraud for a living? Where are you going?"

"Forgot, er, a meeting."

Dimitri headed back up the stairs three at a time rather than waiting for the creaky lift. Because people don't just forget about their overdrafts, not just like that. Not unless something forces them to rearrange their priorities.

A frustrating and nearly suspicion-raising hour later – "You're telling me you forgot _another_ file, Levendis?" – before Dimitri thought to tell the dragon that he'd been seconded for an internal audit – "Good man, we must all suffer under bureaucracy's yoke" – Dimitri had two more dates and locations for Calum, and two more possibles. Calum, to his credit, offered no comment on the tenuous link between them. He took a sly glance around the grid and then called up his illegal software.

"You can't be more specific with the dates?"

"Nope."

Calum shook his head. "Then you're in for a hell of a search."

"Yep." Dimitri leaned closer to the screen. "But this time I know what I'm looking for."

 

\- -

 

Maisie didn't remember much of the train ride home. She left Wes at the station with some sort of mumbled farewell. The idea of going home appalled her; to have to pretend to Ellie that everything was fine when she could still taste the ashes in the back of her throat. For some reason it was the painting which kept coming back to her – the innocuous coastal scene, pale white sky, stormy horizon.

Perhaps that was why she took so long to notice the man following her.

At first, still struggling with the memories, she thought that it was Tom, and stood stupidly staring. He didn't look at her. She spun around and walked back the opposite way. He didn't follow. Stupid. She was imagining things.

A minute later she saw him again. She stopped at a bookstore and browsed the stands, hearing her heart loud in her ears. He went straight past without even a glance. She lingered longer, flipping blindly through the display of Penguins. There – he'd stopped at a cafe half a dozen shops down, examining the menu.

She dug out her phone and called Wes, but he wasn't answering. She started a text, _I think there's someone fol–_ but what was she doing? She needed to keep moving.

There was a group of backpackers at the front of the bookstore, arguing over which map to buy. She waited until they were leaving and slipped out between them, following them as far as the corner before ducking down a side alley and across to the tube station. Down the stairs, back up the escalators at the opposite corner. Don't turn around. Watch in windows, reflections.

She'd never been on this side of the tail before. She divided her concentration – planning ahead, looking behind, marking faces. London unfolded before her a street at a time, safe zones and dangers marked clearly in her mind. It was exhilarating how easily it came. Almost like part of the game, if she could forget what she and Wes had seen.

She caught a bus and then another. When it started to rain she ditched her red umbrella and bought a black one for two quid. Finally she ended at the library and sat at the upstairs reading area where she could see the whole street. The man was nowhere to be seen.

Heart jackhammering in her throat, she tried Wes again, then texted him in capitals, _WHAT'S GOING ON_. Only then did she realise that she didn't know where he was headed. Was he planning on making it back up to school tonight? He'd probably be out of range if he was. Surely he couldn't just turn up at his grandparents'. Did he have other friends in London, someone like Malcolm who he could stay with no questions asked?

It was raining again when she left the library an hour later. As a final move she left the black umbrella in the stand and snatched up someone else's at random. It was only once she had it open outside that she noticed it wasn't as grey and drab as she'd thought, but had a rich blue sky with fluffy clouds painted on the underside, and a meticulously carved heavy wooden handle. She'd stolen someone's heirloom umbrella. Whoops.

The train back to Shepherd's Bush was crowded and delayed. Wes was still ignoring her. She tried to read but the swaying carriage made her sick.

She was halfway across the common when she saw him again.

Her heart froze in her throat. It couldn't be. Come on, Maisie, stop it. But the dark blue jumper, the cropped hair, the lithe swagger: she was certain it was him.

The common was deserted. Ellie's voice flashed through her head – _don't walk through the common after dark_. But it wasn't dark, and she could run faster than any rapist. She cut off the path and towards the main road, the wind tugging at the heirloom umbrella. She checked over her shoulder. He didn't even bother to disguise the manoeuvre this time. He strode purposefully off the path and after her.

The houses were dark and imposing, but the road was busy. She could flag down a car. Could she? No. They were going too fast and it'd give him time to catch up. She kept walking along the road. No need to run. He was a hundred metres behind and if he started chasing her she'd run up to one of the houses, bang on the door and scream. Perhaps she should confront him – _what the fuck are you doing? Where the fuck are Tom and Malcolm?_ Make a fuss. What could he do to her, in broad daylight? Nothing. But she knew it would take more courage than she had.

The newsagent's on the corner. She could see the lights from here, the Coca Cola OPEN sign on the pavement. Yes. She'd stay in there for hours if she had to; call Ellie if she had to, despite the row that would follow. She'd borrow money from the clerk and get a taxi right to the front door of the restaurant if she had to.

She knew she shouldn't keep looking but she did again, hearing her breath loud and alien in her own ears. He was still a way behind; she'd make it, even if she had to drop everything and sprint.

There were people outside the newsagent's as she approached. A man hurrying home with plastic takeaway bags, a newspaper held over his head. A jogger with bright green plastic headphones, oblivious to the rain. She couldn't help it, she ran the last few metres, grabbing the door handle like it was the safe zone in playground chasey. It stuck in her hand. She dropped the heirloom umbrella and wrenched at it with both hands. The whole door rattled in the jamb. The sign was out, the lights were on – but the door was locked.

She spun around. Now she was off the main road, the houses dark and shuttered. The man still wasn't hurrying but he didn't need to.

The woman jogger had slowed and was watching her. Frustrated nearly to tears, Maisie waved at her to stop. The woman tugged her headphones off.

"Sorry," Maisie said, "it's just – that creep's been following me."

The woman took hold of Maisie's arm. "I know," she said. Her fingers were like a vice. "Get in the car, Maisie."

 

\- - -


	4. Chapter 4

\- - -

 

Beth left a long pause after Dimitri finished explaining. "So you think... what exactly? A schoolgirl is bringing about the downfall of MI5, one unexpected resignation at a time?"

Dimitri put the three photos in front of her, one on top of the other – the three clearest views of the girl. "I think it's more than a coincidence."

"If that were true every time someone said it, there would _be_ no coincidences," Beth said, but she picked up the photos and examined them closely. They were at a cafe a few streets from Thames House, at the intersection of Dimitri's impatience and Beth's insistence they not be seen together. Dimitri didn't think any spies would stoop so low as to frequent a place with such terrible coffee. Or any discerning members of the public, either. It was accordingly quiet.

"Marie Shepherd's house," he pointed to the photo, "Mark Cheng, and Erin. All resigned within the last month. I think there's at least one more but I couldn't find photos." He paused. "Marie resigned after her nephew asked her what would happen to him if she died too."

Beth didn't look up. "She's Nathan Shepherd's sister? Isn't that a fairly normal question for a kid to ask after his father's just died?"

"Not when he was just repeating a question someone else had asked him."

"Who asked him?"

Marie Shepherd had thought nothing of it; she had only told Dimitri after he'd suggested openly that perhaps someone else had put ideas in the boy's head. It was nothing, she'd said over a cuppa, just a bully at the school gates, asking him if he was an orphan now. No, Simon didn't know him, but he used to get bullied a lot after his mother ran off with that banker, and the older kids must've found out that his father had died. You know how kids are. Nothing suspicious. Just a kid in a baseball cap. Did you work closely with Nathan? He never mentioned you.

Dimitri pointed to the boy in the photos. Beth looked closer. "Who is he?"

"I don't know. But he's helping her. What the hell is she up to?"

"Like I said," Beth repeated. "Bringing about the downfall of MI5, one unexpected resignation at a time." She paused to take another experimental sip of her coffee, having added three sugars to counteract the bitterness, and pulled a face. "Good luck to her."

There was a smug note of satisfaction in her voice, and Dimitri threw up his hands in disgust.

"Don't you see? There's someone behind this! How the hell does she know where Erin lives? Where all these agents live? There's a bigger picture here, Beth." Erin could still be in danger, he stopped himself from saying.

"Who's behind it, then?"

Dimitri leant forward over the table. "My guess? Tom Quinn."

"Oh no, no way. I told you."

"You're certain?"

"He's the biggest control freak perfectionist in the entire British Isles. I should know, Dimitri, I'm the second biggest. And he's an old-fashioned chauvinist to boot. There's no way he let this girl anywhere near what he does for a living."

Dimitri put his head in his hands. "Fine. Okay. But it doesn't make any sense. They're all working in different Sections, on different cases. They didn't even know each other. Different roles – Erin's a Section Chief, Marie Shepherd was barely above admin. What links them? Why would someone want to take them out of play?"

"Maybe they're random."

"Nothing is random."

Beth flicked through the photos again. "The boy. He's not just hanging out with her. He's watching too. How old do you think he is?"

Dimitri had to admit that he'd hardly looked at the kid. "Don't know," he said again. "Ten, eleven?"

Beth shook her head. "What's she doing hanging around with an eleven-year-old while she enacts her big conspiracy? He's older. And he's important."

"Okay, great. Maybe she'll tell us who he is if we ever actually get to speak to her." Dimitri checked his watch. "Do you think she's home from school by now?"

"She never was at school."

"Yes, but her mother thinks she was, and with a mother like that the last thing she wants to do is make her suspicious." He scooped up the photos and his wallet. "Let's go."

It took him a moment to notice Beth wasn't right behind him. "What?"

"You haven't called this in, have you?"

"Of course not. I don't have enough evidence. I don't know who's behind this or what their endgame is."

Beth gave an impatient sigh. "But you've been running across London all day, chasing after this girl. Where does your Section Head think you are?"

"I don't know. I don't care."

"Don't be stupid. You should at least report in and pretend you're – "

"Beth," he said slowly, "I don't care. Are you coming or not?"

 

 

This time the doorbell was answered almost before Dimitri had finished ringing it. Ellie Simm was still barefoot and messy-haired, looking even more deranged than she had before. "Where is she?"

Once again Dimitri was left backfooted on the doorstep. Luckily Beth had the presence of mind to get them in the door before Ellie continued. She waved her phone at them like a weapon. "Where the _fuck_ is she? I want to speak to Tom."

Dimitri put up his hands. "I'm sorry, I don't – "

"She wasn't at school. I thought she'd sneaked off to see Jess but her phone's off and Jess hasn't seen her. Not today, not last week, not Saturday the twenty-eighth, not for months. She never turns her phone off, _never_ , she knows I – Jesus, where the fuck is Tom? What's he got her involved in? I'll kill him, I swear it – "

"We don't work for Tom," Beth interrupted.

"Oh please don't patronise me, you think I can't recognise you people? Are you telling me you're not MI5?"

"We're MI5," Dimitri said, seeing no need to complicate things with Beth's recent dismissal. "Tom Quinn is not."

"Tom's not a spy any more?"

"Not for years."

Ellie physically struggled to absorb this information. "Then I want Zoe. Danny."

Dimitri looked at her blankly. She practically roared with frustration.

"I swear I'm not lying to you," Dimitri said hurriedly. "I don't know those people."

"It's been a long time since Tom left the service," Beth added. "People move on quickly."

"Fine. Then I'll ask you again. Where the fuck is my daughter?"

He and Beth shared another look. She clearly knew nothing of where Maisie had been spending her time for the last few months, and somehow Dimitri didn't think this was the time to tell her she'd been playing spy all over London. "We don't know."

"Don't lie to me! Coming round here pretending to be cops, pretending you'd forgotten it was school hours – "

"We knew she wasn't at school," Dimitri admitted. "We tried there first, then we tried here, that's all."

"What do you want with her?"

"That was the truth," Beth cut in smoothly. "We've reason to believe she saw something – perhaps she didn't even realise it, perhaps she took a photo on her phone. We identified her on CCTV because she's on Service records."

"She saw something? Then is she – ?"

"We've no reason to believe she's in danger," Beth said. Despite addressing most of her remarks to Dimitri, Ellie seemed to listen more closely to Beth, and they adjusted their roles accordingly. "Are you normally home this time of day?"

"No," Ellie admitted.

"Then she has no reason to think you'd be worried. She could be anywhere – shopping, hanging out with friends, whatever kids do when they don't want to go to school."

"It's not like her to – oh, I don't know."

Beth threw Dimitri a meaningful glance, but he'd recognised it too – the crack in Ellie's anger and their way in. He showed her the photo of the boy. "Do you recognise him?"

"No."

"He was with her on the twenty-eighth," Dimitri said. "Could she know him from school, maybe? A friend's younger brother?"

"I don't know." Ellie shook her head again. "I don't know – her friends. Not any more."

"A boyfriend's brother?" Beth suggested. "If she's been evasive about where she's been spending her time..."

"She doesn't have a boyfriend," Ellie snapped, then faltered. Dimitri could clearly see the guilt-fired anger turning back inwards. He'd seen it in Erin's anger too, that extra layer of fear that this was somehow her fault. _If I'd been home more – if I'd paid more attention –_

"We know what happened with Tom," Beth said quietly. "It's understandable you'd be worried."

Ellie looked from one to the other and back again, then spun around to the kitchen, facing the wall. Her arms were folded tight around her chest.

Dimitri stepped forward. "Maybe we could see her room?"

Ellie looked like she was about to refuse, then she nodded, tight-lipped.

Maisie's room was a mess. Clothes half-out of suitcases, boxes of books against the wall. "When did you move in?" Dimitri asked.

"End of March. But she's been back and forth to Manchester since half-term, to finish her GSCEs. She _has_ , I know, because she's been staying with my sister and I have the arguments and the school reports to prove it, okay?"

"Okay." Dimitri turned on the desktop; it wasn't password-protected. "Are there any other people you can call who might know where she is? Your sister, maybe?"

Ellie nodded stiffly. Dimitri felt the tension in the room drop slightly as she left. They continued the search in silence. Dimitri didn't have much experience with teenage girls' rooms – or at least not since the late nineties – but Maisie's seemed pretty ordinary. Postcards from friends on the walls, photos of people smiling with their arms around each other, posters from films. Nothing on the computer but half-finished essays, pictures of celebrity actors. Email web-based and logged out, cache cleared. Facebook left logged in but no recent posts, hundreds of unread notifications. That was the extent of Dimitri's knowledge of computer forensics.

"Dimitri, look at this."

Beth was standing on a chair to look at the top shelf of the bookcase. Dimitri examined the dust with a finger. "Fake," he confirmed.

"Was she hiding something up here?"

Dimitri shook his head. "From her mother? She said she never comes in here, state of the place I believe her. And the computer's unlocked."

Beth didn't need to say it. If it wasn't Maisie herself hiding things, then it was someone hiding things from _her_. Someone had been in her room, and covered their tracks with professional skill and resources.

"What were they looking for?"

"They'd've put it back, if they didn't want her to know they were here."

Dimitri dragged stuff out from under the bed. A bag of old soft toys. A flute, dusty with disuse. A box of postcards. He flicked through them, handed one to Beth. "Tom?"

Beth frowned and shook her head. "Service, though. Look at that postmark."

"And they're hidden away in a box, not up here with the others." Dimitri laid the postcards on the bed, in rough chronological order. Sent from Edinburgh, Dresden, Devon – to Bristol, the Cotswolds, Manchester – quoting everything from Shakespeare to Auden, and spanning almost ten years. It didn't make any sense.

"What we need," said Beth slowly, "is someone who knows the handwriting and reading habits of every agent of MI5, past and present."

"Ruth's not Five any more. She was poached by the Home Office."

Beth scooped up the postcards. "But I know where she lives. And I still have a key."

 

\- -

 

Maisie was back in the cupboard under the stairs. Dim light, shouting, the musty sour smell of old clothes and years of dust.

Once the front door was shut behind them the hall was in darkness. The jogger with the green headphones twisted Maisie’s wrist neatly and held her up against the wall with one hand while she locked the door with the other. Shouting was coming from somewhere in the house, muffled by more doors, drawn curtains.

Her cheek was pressed into someone’s old coat. She knew better than to fight. The jogger was saying something short and sharp to someone deeper in the house. The shouting, incoherent and terrible, finally stopped.

The hand on her wrist changed grip. “Right. Let’s move.”

She directed Maisie down the darkened hallway. She wasn’t rough, but her control was utterly unequivocal. Maisie got a glimpse of a front room with brown leather couches, a man on the phone standing at the window, pale blinds drawn. The house smelled like it hadn’t been aired since the late seventies.

Another locked door. Maisie found herself in a gloomy bedroom, the door shut behind her, and it was only then that she recognised the shouting.

“Wes. _Wes_.”

He barely glanced at her. He was pacing up and down the narrow strip of carpet between bed and curtained window, fists clenched. She had a detached moment to notice how much taller he’d grown lately, limbs lengthening, shoulders hunched. He couldn't pass for an innocent kid much longer.

“Stupid,” he was muttering, “stupid, stupid, stupid, how could we be so _stupid_.”

“Wes,” she said again. She’d heard the door lock but she tried it anyway; the handle didn’t even turn. “Who are these people? What’s happening?”

Wes ignored her. “Stupid,” he raged. “So busy focusing on our own targets we didn’t even think to look for tails. As if running an op is only about being vigilant in one direction – _criminal_ not to have looked behind – ”

“Wes, stop it.”

She crossed the room and threw open the curtains. She was rewarded with a brick wall a few feet away, high enough that she couldn’t see the sky. An upturned bucket and a fold-out clothesline, tangled in dead ivy. The house had been empty for long enough for ivy to grow and then to die.

“Op’s blown,” Wes was saying. “All our fault, all our fault.”

“ _Stop it._ What are you talking about? Wes, we weren’t running an op, we were playing a dumb game."

He seemed to notice her for the first time. "A _game?_ "

"Yes," she said, more frightened now than she'd been in the car, when she didn't know where they were taking her or where Wes was. "A game. Wes, there _was_ no enemy. Stop it."

She grabbed him by the arm. He spun around with such violence that she hit him, expecting him to strike her back, but he stared at her dumbfounded, face white with shock, then stepped back against the wall and sunk to a crouch in the shadows.

Maisie finished her survey of the room. The security mesh on the window was screwed in tight and there was nothing in the drawers or under the bed. She sat down on the floor next to Wes, facing the door. Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom. It was only then she noticed the blood on his jeans.

“Jesus. What happened? Did they hurt you?”

Wes shook his head. For a minute she thought he wasn’t going to explain, then he said, “Tried to run, didn’t I, like a moron. Tripped.”

“Oh,” she said awkwardly. “Nice one.”

A long silence. She listened, but if the man was still on the phone or the jogger was giving further orders, she couldn’t hear a thing.

She had no idea where they were. She knew London by tube stations, not motorways, and by the time she'd recollected her senses enough to look properly at the industrial estate they were driving through, she was ashamed to admit she didn’t even know if they were east or west of the city. From the middle of the car she could see no horizon, no landmarks.

The creep had taken her phone in the car. She guessed it was about three pm. Ellie would have gone to work thinking Maisie still at school, wouldn’t be home until two or three in the morning.

“What time would your grandparents expect you home?”

Wes shrugged. “They think I’m at the Grammar.”

Of course. How long would it take for Wes’s housemaster to see through whatever deception he’d cooked up? And realise that it was more than his usual truanting routine?

“Wes? None of this bullshit about enemy ops. Do you know who these people are?”

“No," he said shortly.

“Do you know what they want?”

“No.” He shifted his gaze. “Do you?”

“Not a clue,” Maisie said. “Right then. I guess we wait.”

 

\- -

 

Dimitri was back on the six-til-midnight surveillance, and again, nothing was happening. There'd been some kind of shit going down at Section C when he'd returned to the grid, something to do with the investigation into Tariq's death; he'd caught the code-word Tourmaline. In the days after the funeral, which he hadn't been allowed to attend, he'd fantasised about killing the people who'd done it, but now that somebody else had the honour he found it didn't matter. Tariq would still be dead.

He'd been staring at his phone for half an hour. Finally he made the call. There was a clatter before someone answered. "Hello Rosie speaking!"

Dimitri smiled. "Hello, Rosie Speaking. May I talk with your mum?"

He could hear Erin's smile as she came on the line. "She's just found out there are ferries to Ireland from Pembroke. I've never seen her so excited. She thinks that fairies live there."

"When are you heading off?"

"Wednesday, hopefully. We thought the traffic would be better mid-week."

Dimitri laughed. "Mid-week? How's it feel not being at work on a Wednesday?"

"Really weird, to be honest. I'm not cut out to be a full-time mum, D, I tell you. It's exhausting."

Dimitri's heart leapt. "You're thinking of going back to work?"

"Of course. Always was. I've picked up some advisory work in the town, it should fit around my study, might even move to full-time once I've graduated. It'll be good to get back to it. How are you?"

"I'm fine." He swallowed. "Listen, there's something I have to tell you."

"Get _off_ , Rosie, goodness, you're getting heavy. Sorry, D. What's up?"

Dimitri could see Beth approaching from the corner. He glanced up at the apartment window, as a matter of rote: Golyubev hadn't moved. Dimitri was fairly certain men of his age couldn't.

"Dimitri?"

"I, er." What was the point? "I'll miss you," he said finally.

There was a short silence. "I'll miss you too," Erin said. Her voice was warm. "You can come visit us, you know. Whenever you want."

"Thanks. That'd be great. Sorry, I – I have to go."

"Speak soon."

Beth put out her cigarette as she got into the car. She handed Dimitri a takeaway coffee cup, which he took gratefully before realising it was nearly empty. "Thanks," he said dryly.

"You're welcome. Malcolm Wynn-Jones."

"He wrote the postcards?"

Beth nodded. "Ruth had it in three seconds flat, barely even read the first one. He's old school, been at Section D since before it was called Section D. Retired a few years back."

"What does he do now?"

Beth ignored the question. "She recognised the boy too. Wes Carter. Son of Adam and Fiona Carter, deceased, also ex- of Section D."

Dimitri breathed out. "You want to tell me again that this is all a coincidence?"

Beth lit another cigarette. Dimitri opened his mouth to remind her exactly what Bernard did to people who returned his pool cars smelling of smoke, but stopped himself at her stony expression.

"What does he do now?" he asked again.

Beth blew smoke out of the side of her mouth nearest the window, which Dimitri supposed he was meant to be grateful for. "He really is retired, apparently. But according to Ruth he does a little freelancing. For, among others, Tom Quinn and his American wife."

Dimitri hesitated. "Then they could be – "

"I know, I know, I fucked it up, didn't I. Thought I could read people but apparently all I can do is make quick decisions and carry a big gun. I should've known Tom would have someone doing tech on the nationalist job, of course he'd be enough of a paranoid megalomaniac to make sure we never crossed paths." She paused. "Ruth can't get in touch with Malcolm, or Tom. Number disconnected. Both of them."

"You said the number you had for Tom was – "

"Single use, yes. Different for every op. But Ruth had his personal number, one he's had for years. Malcolm's too." She took another furious drag on the cigarette. "Anything on the girl?"

"Nothing." Dimitri paused, assessed, made a decision. "I'm going to call this in."

"Like hell you are."

"Like hell I am," he agreed, reaching for his phone.

Beth grabbed his wrist and snatched the phone with a neat little manoeuvre that left Dimitri's hand and ego slightly bruised. "And pretend like I was never here? Bullshit, Levendis. You'll be out on your arse before you can say paranoid."

"If we're going to find them we need resources. If she's in danger..."

"What's the likelihood she is? Sounds to me like whoever's behind this – Malcolm, Tom, whoever – skipped town as soon as they realised we were on to them, and took the girl with them. There's no way we're going to find them if they don't want to be found. They were best of the best, and that was when they were constrained to moderately legal methods. All you'd be achieving by calling it in would be getting yourself fired for running an off-the-book op with a blacklisted agent."

"I told you, Beth, I don't care about the job."

"Don't be such a fucking idiot! Do you want to end up like me?"

Dimitri was startled into silence. Beth got out of the car, slamming the door behind her, and he watched as she stormed down the street towards the river. After a minute he recovered his phone from the floor of the car and made to call the grid, then stopped. Beth was right. Peter Eames would never believe him, not with such scant evidence, and even if he did there were no dead bodies or imminent threats to public order to justify an investigation. And even if there was, what more would an official investigation achieve than the pooled resources of Dimitri, Beth, Calum and Ruth – and Cerys, if he asked her? They were as good a team as any still on the grid. What would Dimitri getting fired do to help the situation, other than leave Calum the sole person capable of securing information from Registry or the mainframe?

Beth was leaning on the railing of the embankment when Dimitri approached. "What do you mean, end up like you?" he asked.

She was throwing little stones into the water. "Taking whatever job comes your way. Doing – dirty things, for the highest bidder."

"I think we've both done dirtier things in the name of Queen and country than we could ever do for money," Dimitri said quietly. "At least the money's honest about it."

"Don't give me that bullshit. What do you do your job for, if not for the greater good?"

Dimitri shrugged. "I've been asking myself the same question. I think I used to do it for the people I worked with, but not any more."

Beth made an indistinct sound. She lit up another cigarette from the butt of the old one. Dimitri gestured for one and she passed him the pack without a word. The smoke felt good in his lungs. It brought with it the brackish taste of rusted holds and men living in close quarters; salt and sweat.

"Do you remember how we met?" he asked presently.

Beth tapped ash over the railing. "Didn't Tariq challenge all us newbies to arm wrestling in the George and you chickened out?"

"I was straight from the Navy, remember," Dimitri protested. "I was a proper gentleman."

Beth snorted. "You knew I'd kick your arse. Just like all the women in the Navy had."

Dimitri didn't acknowledge that at least the second part was true. "I meant the first time we met. On that pirate ship, when I was a dodgy Greek captain and you were a dodgier Russian prostitute."

"That was meant to be a Greek accent? No wonder you were blown."

Dimitri sighed. "It's – different now. Since Erin left, and Section D was disbanded. I spend most of my day behind a desk, or on shitboring surveillance. I thought Harry was overly paranoid about Russians, but at least he could pick the right ones."

Beth muttered something that sounded like _at least you still have morals_ , but he could tell there was no venom left in it. Dimitri wasn't naive – he'd long come to terms with the ease with which he could justify to himself the horrible things he sometimes had to do. His blindness was in thinking other people had the same reasons.

"I lied," Beth said some time later. "What I said about school."

Dimitri wasn't listening. "What?"

"I didn't skive off once. I was a goody-two-shoes, always had the right answer, always worked the hardest. I had the teachers eating out of the palm of my hand. Everyone else hated me."

"Doesn't sound like you."

"Doesn't it? All that time in South America and the Middle East pretending to be a rebel without a cause. Section D was my homecoming, Dimitri. That's who I really was, the earnest little teacher's pet, happy to do terrible things as long as some rulebook was behind it. Then I went and fucked it up."

Dimitri sucked down the last of the smoke, then ground the butt under his heel. "I think we both need a holiday," he declared.

"Bloody right," Beth muttered to the river.

"First though, are we at least going to attempt to find this girl?"

Beth squinted sideways at him. "You know it won't bring Erin back. Or make your desk job any more exciting."

"I know. But if we've got one thing in common it's an unhealthy curiosity, yes?"

Beth turned back to the river and gave it her coy little smile.

 

\- -

 

Maisie had no idea how long it was they waited. Long enough for her to work through the small amount of Othello she remembered from the double Lit she was missing, and the passages of Eliot she was already forgetting from her GCSEs.

“Wes? What plays have you done at your whacky school?”

Wes snorted. “Can do the Lord’s Prayer and the first six psalms.”

Maisie couldn’t, at least not past _hallowed be thy name_ , but she was saved from having to ask Wes to teach her by the sound of the key in the lock. They stood, together.

The jogger, now dressed in black and grey. She took them down the hall one hand on each arm. Maisie telepathically urged Wes not to try anything stupid. Into the sitting room where they were positioned side by side in front of the fireplace like naughty children.

“Well well well. Mister Carter, Miss Simm. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. You _have_ been busy, haven’t you?”

How could Maisie ever have confused this man’s words for Malcolm’s or Tom’s? He was elegant, slender, a sharply-made suit and sharper features. He spoke kindly, but there was a smooth menace to him that chilled Maisie to the bone.

“What do you want?” Wes demanded. The frightened child was gone – this man fitted squarely into Wes's game. Maisie stepped back, almost involuntarily. The fireplace, behind her, was bricked in, a little electric heater sitting in the narrow recess, thick with dust.

The man arched an elegant eyebrow. “What do I want? Ultimately, you. Getting one past Five is something of a national pastime these days, but your audacity is to be applauded. You’ll be a welcome addition to the ranks across the river once you grow a little.”

“You’re MI-6,” Wes accused.

“Correct. Something of a homecoming, hmm? Your father and mother were in my service when they weren’t much older than you.”

“Your service killed my father and mother.”

The Six man pulled a face as if he'd smelt something mildly distasteful. "Please, no need for dramatics. Miss Simm, you’ll be pleased to know we aren’t just an old boys’ club these days, and you’ll be welcome too, once you’ve finished with Othello and Marx.”

“What do you want?” Wes said again, through gritted teeth. She had no doubt he'd take this man, and the jogger and the creep in the next room, height and age disregarded, if they so much as spoke a single word of disrespect against his parents.

“Ah yes, I am speaking a little long-term, aren’t I? Short-term things are different. Quite simply, I’d like for you to stop your little game. It’s been very amusing, all the more so for Five’s stupendous inability to give you the credit of noticing. But it’s gone on long enough.”

Maisie saw Wes stiffen, hands clenched into fists. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Yes yes, very good. Keeping an eye out for unusual personnel movements is of paramount importance for national security, did you know that? Apparently Five don't, bless their hearts. But we do."

From the depths of Maisie's numbness, her blood boiled. Was all this – the snatching, the safehouse, the hours locked in a darkened room – just an elaborate telling off? But even as she felt Wes’s anger, something held her tongue, kept her silent, waiting. Later, she didn't know if she’d actually recognised the bigger game, or if she was just numb with shock.

She was never quite sure what happened next. She felt it like a blow, sending her back against the wall, elbows knocking against the edge of the fireplace, but in her logical recollection the sounds were quick and muffled and Tom opened the door quite calmly.

“Don’t fucking touch them.”

The Six man put up his hands in mock horror. His eyes were all snake. “Come now, young Tom, as if I’d harm a child.”

It took Maisie a long moment to realise that Tom was holding a gun. Behind him, in the hall, she could see the creep who’d followed her across London doubled up from a punch to the guts.

Tom didn’t reply. He flicked his eyes to Maisie, and she nodded _I’m fine_ , sick to the stomach at the cold fury in his face. “Then we’re leaving.”

“So soon? I'm glad you got my note; it's been such a long time, hasn't it? How’s business?”

“I’m retired from the service, Siviter,” Tom said tiredly, but there was warning there too. He didn’t lower the gun. The shadow of the jogger moved behind the glass door to the dining room; stilled at a quick gesture from Siviter.

“Tom, Tom. I understand you’re retired from the _service_ , but yourself and Ms Dale found yourself unemployed with, how should I say, a rather specific skill set. Understandable that you’d want to keep using it, once Harry cut you loose.”

At Maisie's side, Wes made a small movement. She reached out and grabbed his wrist with a strength she didn't know she had. He twisted away, scowling, but stayed where he was.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about."

“Do you know,” Siviter continued, as if Tom hadn’t spoken, “I was reminded of the oddest thing the other day. Right after the death of that BNP candidate – terrible accident, wasn't it – I found myself thinking of the assassination of the US Chief of Defence, oh it must have been almost ten years ago now. Do you remember?”

“That was a setup. As you well know.”

“Yes, of course it was. I don't know what it was made me think of it.”

"Do you have any evidence to back up your case of déjà vu?"

"Regrettably, no."

Tom set his jaw. “Then we’re leaving.”

 

 

“We didn’t need _rescuing_ ,” Wes muttered as they got into the car. It was low enough that Tom could pretend not to have heard.

“I need to call Mum,” Maisie said, hearing her own voice from far away.

“I just did,” Tom said gently. “She knows you’re safe.”

They drove in silence. This time, Maisie tried to pay attention to where they were, but it was dark and the lights and street signs were hazy with rain. She couldn't look at Wes – she was furious with him, so much so that she feared she might hit him if he so much as opened his mouth.

"I'll call you later," he mumbled as he got out of the car at his grandparents' house. She nodded in response, but didn't know if he'd seen.

Tom watched him inside the house, then turned to face her. She couldn’t look at him either.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?”

“You’re not my father,” she retorted, seeing him flinch in surprise out of the corner of her eye.

“How old is he, fourteen? He’s a child, Maisie. What were you thinking, letting him take things this far?"

"I didn't _let_ him do anything – you think I can control what he does?"

"Running around the city pretending to be spies – ”

“It was his idea!”

“Then you should’ve stopped him.”

Maisie opened her mouth to explain – that Wes wasn’t a normal fourteen-year-old, he was a genius, perhaps the cleverest person Maisie had ever known – but she remembered his pale face, furious tears, all that wild talk about enemy ops, and she fell silent. She needed to apologise to him, she realised, though he would scorn her. I'm sorry I fell for the same act everyone else has been falling for, from your Uncle Harry to Malcolm to your schoolmasters, and maybe even back to your parents. I'm sorry you're so fucking clever that you think the rules of grief don't apply to you.

Tom quietly pulled the car back into traffic.

“They followed me, didn’t they,” she said in a small voice. “They sent that postcard knowing I’d think it was from you, and they followed me right to your door.”

“Yes,” Tom said.

How had they known about the postcards? The same way they knew that she was studying Othello and Marx. They’d been in her room. They’d been through her things, looking for a way to get to Tom. Because she’d attracted their attention, her and Wes and their stupid little game.

“The fire...”

“Took out everything it was meant to. There was nothing important left for Siviter’s men to find.”

“But you can’t go back there.”

“No. We’ll have to find somewhere else. We have before. England is full of hidey-holes.”

“What about all your things?”

“Things are unimportant.”

“What about the dog?”

“The dog’s unimportant.”

“Jesus, do you ever listen to yourself?”

Tom sighed. “I’m sorry, Maisie. I should never have let you come.”

“You should never have trusted me, you mean.”

He shook his head, eyes on the road. “I should never have been so complacent. I knew they were searching for me. If it hadn’t’ve been through you they would’ve found another way.”

“What do they want with you? What are you, an anarchist? A terrorist? Destabilising the government on behalf of the CIA?”

Tom smiled, with no humour. “I think they want me to work for them.”

“Seriously? Then why the hell don’t you? They’re pretty persuasive.”

Tom, of course, didn’t answer. He changed down gears as they stopped at a red light. “What do you want to do when you finish school, Maisie?”

“Go to university,” she snapped.

“Then what?”

She folded her arms and stared out the window.

“I don’t mean to be patronising. God knows it took me long enough to work it out. But you’ll come to realise, it’s not what you do that’s important, it’s who you do it for.”

“Great, thanks for the advice.” She decided to sit out the rest of the journey in silence, but then something else crossed her mind. “Does Mum know? About the game?”

“No. Are you going to tell her?”

Maisie snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“You should. She doesn’t like secrets.”

“You have no fucking idea what she likes.”

She’d provoked him into silence again. Hot tears burned in her eyes, but she held them at bay with an iron will. Damned if he was going to make her cry ever again.

“So you were convincing people to resign?” Tom said presently, as if asking about the weather.

Maisie waited a long time before deciding to reply. “Only ones that didn’t really need convincing.”

“How many?”

She hesitated. “Four.”

Tom’s cheek twitched.

“It would never have worked with you,” she said. “You never loved us enough to give up the job for us.”

“No,” Tom said patiently, looking at the road. “But I loved you enough to give _you_ up.”

Then he caught her eye in the mirror and smiled at her, Jesus, his fucking smiles. Maisie, if only so she didn’t burst into tears, smiled fiercely back.

 

\- - -


End file.
